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Consultancy firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) aims to expand its Middle East business by as much as five times over the next few years, betting it can steal market share from rivals even as demand for advisory services shrinks.
The firm is on track to double its Gulf revenue this year despite the impact of the Iran war and weaker spending on consultants in Saudi Arabia, Collie Spink, A&M’s managing director and regional head for the Middle East, said in an interview.
“There are certain headwinds from the conflict that have stymied some of the growth we expected,” Spink said. But “the tailwinds are stronger than the headwinds.”
A&M expects growth to come from advising the Saudi government on investment projects, mergers and acquisitions, and tourism and hospitality developments. Spink said the firm is also seeing rising demand for consultancy tied to localizing military manufacturing, which has acquired a new urgency in the wake of the Iran war.
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Spink’s optimism about the growth opportunities in Saudi Arabia comes even as the kingdom trims capital expenditure, cuts some projects, and limits spending on foreign consultants. Saudi Arabia ordered government entities to freeze payments to strategy advisers, management consultants, and law firms, Semafor reported in May. The government denied it was delaying payments to consultants.
This environment is driving A&M to seek growth by winning market share from rivals, Spink said. “I don’t think the consulting market is growing,” he said. “But we’ve been underweight in the region.”
The war is creating new opportunities for firms like A&M, and Saudi Arabia’s emergence from the conflict relatively unscathed is a positive backdrop, Spink said. The kingdom’s renewed effort to attract foreign investment, and Public Investment Fund’s new strategy for 2026-2030 placing greater emphasis on bringing private capital into diversification projects can drive consultancy growth.
“Even pre-conflict there was significant pressure and desire to attract more FDI into the transformation program, and you’re starting to see policy change, regulatory change, and other levers being pulled to encourage and facilitate that,” he said.