Alpha FMC buys White Marble Consulting and Bankside Financial Solutions Consulting. Alpha Financial Markets Consulting has completed a double-acquisition, to boost its UK offering. The deals are for White Marble Consulting, a specialist marketing consultancy firm to asset management clients, and Bankside Financial Solutions Consulting, a technology consulting firm providing specialist data integration services to asset and wealth management clients.
In May 2024, Alpha Financial Markets Consulting (Alpha FMC) confirmed that it had received a number of expressions of interest and proposals, with reports emerging that both Bridgepoint and rival private equity investor Cinven had approached the company about a potential deal. In the end, the bid from Bridgepoint prevailed, for a reported £626 million.
With this backing from Bridgepoint, a well-known investor in the consulting landscape (with previous investments in the likes of Analysys Mason, ERM and HKA), Alpha FMC is now looking to push ahead with ambitious expansion plans. To that end, it has welcomed the staff of White Marble Consulting to its ranks.
Founded in London in 2014 by Twink Field, White Marble has a team of 28 industry specialists across the UK and North America. White Marble brings a very strong track record of delivering marketing services to asset management, wealth management and alternatives clients, and a highly complementary client base.
According to a release from the firms, the combined expertise of White Marble and Alpha FMC creates a holistic range of client solutions from brand strategy to supporting go-to-market projects, to end-to-end digital and creative services support. Meanwhile, the acquisition will enable Alpha to build a leading marketing, brand and creative agency proposition to financial services clients globally.
Twink Field, founder of White Marble, noted, “We are delighted to be joining Alpha and forming a specialist marketing boutique within the Group. We have admired the Alpha business for many years and have already worked together on a range of projects to bring the best integrated solutions to clients. The cultural fit and complementary nature of our capabilities make this a very exciting and natural next step for White Marble. Quality, client service and investment specialism remain integral to our work and will remain our priority going forward, as part of the Alpha Group.”
At the same time, Alpha FMC has added Bankside to its group. Founded in 2018 by Paul Cardosi and Rob Surridge, provides deep technology and data expertise to clients. Alongside a highly skilled management team, Bankside has around 100 industry practitioners experienced in delivering critical transformations.
Asset managers are increasingly moving to and investing further in enterprise platforms such as BlackRock Aladdin, Charles River, SimCorp, and Bloomberg. Bankside brings unrivalled expertise in data integration and migration in this space, with specific expertise in Snowflake. This includes delivery capability across the latest data cloud offerings and a proprietary tool that enables significant time saving and risk reduction on data migrations and implementations.
Looking ahead, Alpha FMC contends that the combination of its leading consulting capability for the asset and wealth management sector and the Bankside team’s deep expertise and toolsets will enhance the Group’s competitive end-to-end offering for clients through large-scale and complex technical implementations.
Paul Cardosi and Rob Surridge, co-founders of Bankside, said, “We are very pleased with this opportunity to bring together Bankside’s depth of delivery expertise, with the breadth of experience and capability that the Alpha team has to offer. After working closely with Alpha on successful implementations, we found common ground in terms of strategy and approach, which bodes well for future projects. Being able to launch and further develop our new data integration tool with the support of the Alpha team is an exciting prospect.” Alpha FMC buys White Marble Consulting and Bankside Financial Solutions Consulting.
The acquisitions are “an important step for Alpha FMC”, according to the firm, as it deepens and broadens its service offering to clients. The move supports the firm’s vision to grow at scale, while welcoming recognised industry leaders to the business.
Commenting on the acquisitions Joe Morant, global head of asset and wealth management consulting, explained, “We are delighted to welcome Twink, Paul, Rob, and the wider White Marble and Bankside teams to Alpha. We have worked together for many years on common clients, so today’s news is a logical step in strengthening our relationship – put simply, “Experts recognise expertise”. This shared vision of deep asset and wealth management expertise, concentrated further in the branding, marketing services, and investment technology domains, makes this a winning combination. We are excited to add more industry-leading domain expertise to the Alpha platform to benefit our clients.”
