Corporate finance and valuation services are fields that seem tough to comprehend and require a special skill where one has to combine complex data with human insight to provide the right solution. At Duff & Phelps, consultants are expected to bring more than this: they must develop a sector-based client insight.  

When firms put what clients need to know ahead of what clients want to know, “facts become insights and diligence becomes scrutiny”. This is the philosophy at Duff & Phelps, even as the firm combines technical analysis and industry expertise to create a differential factor that enhances value and helps clients build businesses. This results in peace of mind for clients while they make important decisions.

This is the corporate culture that Duff & Phelps, founded in 1932, follows in its working habits as well as in its human resource policies. The firm now has more than 2,000 employees around the world and has successfully utilized this strategy to multiply its revenue 23 times within just ten years. This also explains why the company promotes excellence in its consulting practices.

In the words of Yann Magnan, Head of European Valuation Practice and Managing Director at Duff & Phelps: “Powering sound decisions means giving peace of mind to decision makers who come across engaging decisions on a daily basis,” since the company believes that their clients don’t approach them for auditing purposes only but for deep industry insight.

Duff & Phelps has been adopting this differential approach which has helped it in gaining increasing recognition as a key advisor for high-end clients where the clients tend to look for a different and custom made approach to business that can help create a real relationship with their advisers.

Actually, the company even claims to give much more than just ‘advice’ and enhance the value of the clients’ economic development. Most of this is due to the entrepreneurial culture of the company, which best describes the corporate culture at Duff & Phelps.

“We are highly proactive, we are looking for new opportunities and we are also trying to develop our practice faster. We have an entrepreneurial and consulting culture. Because we are still growing, we need to constantly evolve and develop ourselves, for instance through recent acquisitions that have made us more global,” says Henk Oosterhout, Managing Director at Duff & Phelps.

The corporate and the working philosophy of the company, describes Henk Oosterhout, is primarily divided into two things – one has to have a clear knowledge about the industry as well as the placement of the client in the particular industry and the firm also has to know how to use the financial numbers in order to say something about the strategy that the client should follow.

That’s why apart from the ability of financial analysis, it is imperative that Duff & Phelps relies on its specific expertise about various industries. Therefore, the global valuation company views hyperspecialized HR as a key success factor.

In the words of Robert A. Bartell, a Managing Director of the company: “it’s also a vision and a quest to be global and not recognize silos within organizations that can creep up. It’s almost considering things borderless as a global platform.”

The company has managed to create a corporate culture where employees “really want to work together”, and puts their client first and before everything else, adds Bartell. “The word is collaborative,” and stresses that team work and transparency are among the most important elements of corporate culture at Duff & Phelps.

“The ability to work together is key. Bringing the best expertise and experience to our clients is key as well. Then, we need to help and develop our people in that prospect, and to make sure that our people are trained to the highest level… Our job is demanding because our clients expect us to be “best in class” players. They expect us to bring the best expertise and the best answers to their concerns,” echoes Yann Magnan, Managing Director at Duff & Phelps.

This corporate culture is obviously reflected in the HR and recruitment policy that the firm prescribes, as explained by Henk Oosterhout. The company looks out for “a special type of consultant to fit in, in our firm”, he says. “It must be someone who has the tendency to go beyond simply  ‘scratching the surface’ and get to the core of an issue. These are the main qualities we are looking for when searching for new colleagues,” Oosterhout concludes.

Then, the hiring policy of the company entails the basic principle and the single most important factor that differentiates Duff & Phelps from others in the industry. The firm works with talents that are not only excellent financial analysts, but who also specialize as industry experts. In this manner, “we can expand industry-specific teams and offer a more powerful service to the companies who fit in that industry,” says Oosterhout.

This is what, the company believes, would drive it in the future.

“We attract more and more talents interested in these areas. We see it every day; people with strong skills approaching us and willing to work with our clients and develop new sets of services”, says Yann Magnan.

The firm sums up its differentiating corporate culture by saying that the foundation of the company is ‘rooted in the people’ and those who really want to work at the firm. With such a workforce that is passionate about Duff & Phelps probably helped the company to create a niche in the world of financial advising and valuation services.

 

See also:

What it’s like to work at Duff & Phelps, Manageria

How Duff & Phelps went global in corporate finance industry, Mase Mag

Duff & Phelps : from valuation to restructuring, an organizational learning special case, Revue RMS