Staffing Industry M&A Activity Surges in Professional Staffing

Three very large acquisitions in the staffing industry have occurred in a relatively short period of time.

Just a few months ago Adecco announced the $1.3 billion deal to acquire MPS Group. MPS Group, as many of you may know, has multiple divisions including Modis, their successful IT division, Accounting Principals, their finance & accounting group, and Special Counsel for legal. All of these groups have talented and tenured management that rose through the ranks to become so. They also have solid producers as well, indicating that this was a very smart play for Adecco.

Just yesterday, Manpower announced the acquisition of Comsys. Comsys is a super solid IT staffing player with a great reputation and great numbers. Manpower secured a very good deal in acquiring Comsys for $431 million. Comsys brings some great IT staffing prowess to Manpower at the time when IT staffing is on the rise.

Also yesterday, Spherion acquired Tatum CFOs, a firm focused on senior-level finance & accounting contract and project work, in a comparatively smaller deal for $46 million. Tatum has been around for a long while and competes with RHI’s Management Resources, Jefferson Wells (owned by Manpower), and Resources Global.

All three acquisitions certainly have one thing in common: Large staffing firms want to grab market share in professional staffing.

And it certainly makes sense because professional staffing is high margin, longer term business. More importantly, professional staffing, especially IT, will be the first area of staffing to make a dramatic comeback in 2010.

Is it coincidence that Adecco, Manpower and Spherion are all making these moves at the same time? No, probably not. They all are optimistic about Q2 and they know professional staffing will continue to bring in new demand and better numbers very shortly. They also know that gaining market share in professional staffing now will pave the way to opening doors in other divisions as the economy continues to improve.

In short, we are seeing the start of a comeback in 2010 for the staffing industry. Optimism has replaced negative sentiments and staffing firms know that making the first move might give them the edge they need to take control of valuable market share.

It will be interesting to see what happens next. After the draught we’ve experienced, one thing is for sure – savvy staffing firms only need an ounce of opportunity to produce a ton of business.


Perrin Peacock
CEO Openreq
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