I am hearing of at least a few ex-PwC consultants exiting IBM as the 3 year earnout period comes to an end. Services firms are being valued at 1 to 1.5X again, much higher than when PwC sold at the bottom of the services "nuclear freeze". Of course, well run firms like Cognizant are valued today at 10 times their revenues. It would not be surprising if a few PwC folks try to build firms which they could sell at these much higher valuations.
Is this bad for IBM? I am not so sure. A number of PwC partners did well in the 90s - especially around ERP and business process focused practices. They thrived on relationship selling and they taught several IBM salespeople the art of solution selling to a blue chip client base they brought. Not sure, however, many transitioned well to the price sensitive world we live in. In a young BPO market their process skills (especially in the finance and accounting areas) are still very useful but as offshore competition grows there also, IBM will need to go back to its hardware roots to re-think and re-position its services price/performance story.
