More on the disintegration of BearingPoint

The Vultures are Circling...

Last week, we wrote how parts of BearingPoint may be sold off (see Disintegration of BearingPoint). Accenture was indicated as being interested in BearingPoint's Asian operations. BearingPoint may have to execute a number of sales of its assets (i.e., practice units) to retire some of its debt load. Given their recent bankruptcy filing, the people calling the shots now on these sales are most likely the creditors and not BearingPoint management.

This week, Reuters captured an interview with the CEO of Grant Thornton. This telling comment was reported:

"We would be interested in selected pieces, but certainly not the whole entity," Grant Thornton CEO Ed Nusbaum said in an interview.

He said Grant Thornton may be interested in its government consulting and general business consulting units, but would not be buy BearingPoint's information technology system implementation business.

If these two sales were to transpire, it would leave the firm much smaller. It would have a European practice that is material in size as well as domestic US practice that has a strong government book of business.

What we haven't seen in all of this are the Indian service firms. Maybe these companies are too distracted by (or interested in) the Satyam assets to look at BearingPoint. Likewise, the absence of firms that specialize in government IT contracts in these potential asset sales is quite interesting.