Quadrant reportedly puts project consultancy TSA Riley on sale for $500 million
Australian project management consultancy TSA Riley has been reportedly put up for sale by private equity owner Quadrant, with an attached price tag of half a billion dollars.
Reported by the AFR in January to have engaged investment bank MA Moelis on the sale process, The Australian has now claimed potential bidders for TSA Riley include some of the world’s largest engineering advisories, including Jacobs, WSP, and AECOM.
Approaching its 25th anniversary, such a deal would see the Sydney-headquartered firm return to industry ownership after close to a decade, with Quadrant having picked up its share in 2021 from UK private equity firm Livingbridge, which had originally invested in 2017.
Since changing hands, for a sum believed to have been around $200 million, TSA has added UK counterpart Henry Riley, at the time expanding the firm’s global headcount to 850 professionals spread across almost two dozen offices in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, and the UK. That figure is now beyond 1,000, with a further recent expansion into Canada.
Other purchases since Quadrant’s takeover include Worley’s capital projects practice from within its Advisian advisory business (now Worley Consulting), with The Australian also floating Worley as among TSA’s suitors alongside fellow Sydney-headquartered engineering firm GHD and Melbourne’s Aurecon, in addition to international players like Arcadis, AtkinsRealis, and Stantec.
The bidders?
The degree to which The Australian’s report is speculative as opposed to sourced information is a little unclear, with the publication then going on to suggest that other project management firms are also seen as natural buyers, potentially as well as global real estate giants JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, and Savills, and a range of environmental consultancies such as ERM, SLR, and RSK.
The Big Four even get a mention, alongside HKA and FTI Consulting due to TSA’s disputes arm, despite having largely bailed out of the infrastructure segment after having made a serious earlier push following the post-Covid boom in Australia’s construction pipeline. Either way, interested parties will reportedly have to stump up somewhere in the region of $500 million-plus.
TSA Riley – rebranded from TSA Management in 2024 following its Henry Riley acquisition – generates revenues pushing the $250 million-mark, with almost a third of that apparently now derived from the UK market. While TSA will this year celebrate the 25th anniversary of its 2001 founding by Ted Tooher and Brian Smart, Henry Riley’s history dates back to 1890 in London.
Private equity buyer?
Meanwhile, the AFR thinks the private equity sector might still be interested in picking up TSA despite its massive price-tag, citing recent deals such as Mace Consult’s carve-out last year with the backing of Goldman Sachs, while local private equity player Pemba Capital has also been busy assembling a scaled environmental and infrastructure advisory under the Sequana brand.
