KPMG LLP, a global audit, tax and financial advisory firm, said it will acquire Atlanta-based Link Analytics LLC to expand its data and analytics capabilities.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Link, a data management solutions company, was founded about three years ago by Chief Executive Officer Will Hakes and colleague Sean Groer, the company's chief analytics officer. In a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Secrets of Success" report, Hakes wrote about the challenges of starting a small company.
Hakes told the AJC on Wednesday his company had “casual conversations” with several companies over the past nine months, but more earnest talks occurred in the past two to three months, and a deal with KPMG stood out as a “perfect fit.”
Link builds analytics technology to help big companies make sense of what to do with their data and to help them make smarter business decisions.
“We knew were in the right space, doing the right thing,” Hakes said of his company’s decision to focus on big data analytics. “Then the question was, can we put the right people on the team to make it a reality and we’ve done so.”
Before the deal was announced, the company had expected sales to reach $14 million to $18 million next year, from more than $6 million last year. Hakes would not comment on future projections.
Alton Adams, a KPMG principal and U.S. leader for customer strategy and growth, said Link will help corporate clients understand what drives consumer behavior.
“Increasingly, the ability to gather, analyze, contextualize and disseminate data is critical to our clients’ growth aspirations, and the acquisition of Link Analytics dramatically accelerates our ability to embed advanced analytics inside our clients’ organizations,” Adams said in a statement on the acquisition.
Link will continue its operations near Perimeter Mall at its Crown Pointe offices, where the company has doubled its footprint. “We’ve invested in this space and KPMG is excited about having it as a central hub [for analytics services],” Hakes said.
Hakes said Link will be fully integrated into KPMG, and he and Groer will become managing directors after the deal closes, which is expected within a week.
Before co-founding Link, Hakes was president of Advanced Analytics, a division of Aspen Marketing Services, and served as chief marketing officer of AMC Inc., a wholesale trade exchange. The East Cobb native received a bachelor’s degree in international affairs and economics from Georgia Tech, and a master of business administration and PhD in decision sciences from Georgia State University.
Groer is a former vice president at Advanced, where he managed the telecom analytics practice. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Fairfield University in Connecticut and a master’s statistics from the University of Tennessee.
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