Korn/Ferry buys Lominger

Posted by fellow OD blogger Terry on the trdev egroup:

Korn/Ferry International, a California executive search firm, is paying $24 million to buy Lominger Ltd. Inc., a leadership development company.

The all-cash deal gets KFI Lominger Limited Inc., Lominger Consulting and Lominger Intellectual Property.

Lominger, based in Minneapolis, will become a wholly-owned unit of KFI and part of the company's Leadership Development Solutions business. The company will be branded as Lominger International, A Korn/Ferry Company. Robert W. Eichinger, Co-Founder and CEO of Lominger, has signed an agreement to join Korn/Ferry as President of Lominger, while Co-Founder Michael M. Lombardo will also stay on in the role of Senior Research Fellow.

"Korn/Ferry has built a significant presence in the leadership development marketplace that will be enhanced by this acquisition. Lominger has a gold-standard reputation among HR and OD professionals," said Gary Hourihan, President of Korn/Ferry's Leadership Development Solutions business. "Clients recognize the quality of the research that the Lominger products are built upon, and they respect the methodology and the results."

Lominger really is a great brand for us HR folks, specially if you consider that Eichinger has co-authored a book with Dave Ulrich (!!) called 100 things you need to know

Hmm, looks like clients are asking Korn/Ferry to not just source leaders but also to help them develop leaders (external hires? Internal people?). Very interesting. Hmm, now do I need to work closely with the folks at Recruiting.com ? ;-))

So would the Korn Ferry search consultants now be having conversations like this?

Client Chairman: Dear Headhunter, I need a turnaround CEO for the widgets business that has gone through a rough patch recently. We're losing market share, the Chinese are beating us on price, our suppliers are screaming hoarse, and my previous three CEOs were fired by the board.

Headhunter: Hmm...we'll draw up a list of possible candidates, but I want to let you know that widget CEOs are people who've never managed a turnaround since the business was always sych a cash cow. Would you be willing to look at someone who's not a CEO, maybe a CMO or COO of the swidgets industry?

CC: Swidgets? But that would mean teaching them all about our industry !

HH: Ah well, for that we have our newly acquired leadership development division ....of course now my billing will comprise of two components, the search and the development !