Another big tax firm acquires Aussie IT channel player

Sydney-headquartered IT consultancy and SaaS outfit Consult Point Group has been snapped up by the $218 million-dollar tax and business advisory firm Grant Thornton Australia.

Consult Point Group has high profile customers across higher education, government and healthcare, including the University of Sydney and Australian Catholic University, as well as Macquarie Group, AMP Capital and several state governments.

The deal, which is expected to complete on 1 July this year, also includes its C9 Solutions business, which sells Netsuite and various other SaaS products as well as offering consulting and integration.

The acquisition allows Grant Thornton to more than quadruple the size of its digital advisory team, which will increase from seven people to 37. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Sydney firm joins a large operation. Grant Thornton has more than 1,100 people working in offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. It lists its turnover as $218.5 million.

Consult Point is headquartered in Sydney and has a presence in Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide.

Grant Thornton’s technology practice has not historically been its biggest calling card, although the firm does already have a connection to the IT channel – as an administrator.

While the deal increases Grant Thornton's technology capability, CRN understands it does not mean the firm will become a reseller. While Consult Point is sometimes involved in high level design, the building and implementation of solutions is left to other partners, with Consult Point taking a project management and technology advisory role.

Major accountancy and advisory firms are making their mark in the Australian IT channel.  EY (previously called Ernst and Young) announced the acquisition of two Australian analytics companies this year, while KPMG bought Sydney-headquartered identity and access management provider First Point Global.

Meanwhile Deloitte announced a deal with IBM partner The Lonsdale Group in December, as well as being one of the major partners for the launch of VMWare’s vCloud Air service this year. Last year PwC announced the rollout of Google Apps within its organisation, as well as a reseller partnership with Google.