The CMA Drain

Five named senior CMA economists made six documented private-practice moves in this article's source set; Stefan Hunt appears at the CMA, Keystone and AlixPartners. Here is where they went, and which platforms hired or financed the moves.

Leath · 10 April 2026 · 14 min read

One economist, three firms, three years

On 2 December 2025, Companies House recorded a new LLP member at AlixPartners UK, a starchy entry in a starchy register: Stefan Alexis Hunt, no job description, no fanfare, just the date and the name and the firm. Less than three years earlier, in January 2023, Hunt had joined Keystone Strategy as Head of K.ATS Europe, the boutique's newly-launched Advanced Technology Services arm; less than a year before that, he was still inside the Competition and Markets Authority, where he had spent nearly five years building its Data and Technology Unit into one of the most advanced analytics teams of any competition regulator in the world. Three firms in three years. The file entry tells you nothing. It tells you everything.

On its own, Hunt's move reads as an ambitious economist trading up. Set against the other moves in the same three-year window, it is part of a documented cluster. Five senior CMA economists have made six landings across four private firms since Andrea Coscelli stepped down as chief executive (Coscelli and Hunt to Keystone; Walker to Frontier; Sala to Oxera; Bon and then Hunt again to AlixPartners). The regulator-to-consultancy move set sits alongside capital events: Flint Global has drawn a majority investment from Cinven with terms undisclosed, while Econic has announced financing from Goldman Sachs Alternatives. This article reads the people moves and the capital moves together, while treating the causal link as interpretation rather than a filing fact.

Section 1: The regulator as recruiter

The CMA employs around 1,160 staff, 1,157 payroll plus five non-payroll as of December 2024, and since the OFT and the Competition Commission were welded together in 2014, the new authority has invested heavily in data analytics and behavioural methods. Andrea Coscelli ran the authority as chief executive from 2016 to 2022. By the time he stepped down, the chief economist's team had become one of the most visible public-sector training grounds for competition economists in this article's move set.

Since Coscelli's departure, five senior economists have left that team for private practice. Each move carries a named announcement and a date.

The documented CMA moves spread across several firm types rather than pooling in one destination. Coscelli and Hunt went to a Boston strategy boutique; Walker went to an employee-owned regulatory specialist; Sala went to an Oxford competition house; Bon went to a US-listed turnaround outfit. The receiving firms differ in genre, ownership, and sales pitch, but each was hiring for regulator-derived expertise. Hunt is on the table twice because he moved twice: first from the CMA to Keystone, then from Keystone to AlixPartners in December 2025. That second move links the CMA pipeline to AlixPartners' 14-month competition-economics build.

Section 2: The Keystone European build

Greg Richards and Professor Marco Iansiti founded Keystone Strategy in Boston in 2003, and for its first two decades the London office was a small outpost feeding the US parent's big-tech antitrust caseload. From 2022 onward, the public hire sequence shows Keystone turning that outpost into a fuller European platform. The build happened in three steps, not one. Cristina Caffarra partnered with Keystone in July 2022, crossing over from Charles River Associates where she had run the European competition practice for more than a decade; she was the anchor. Roughly six months later, on 29 November 2022, Keystone announced that Andrea Coscelli, the outgoing CEO of the CMA, would join as joint Head of Europe from 3 January 2023, a move the UK's Advisory Committee on Business Appointments blessed in a formal advice letter. Eight weeks later, on 24 January 2023, Keystone announced that Stefan Hunt would arrive as Head of K.ATS Europe, reporting to Rohit Chatterjee, the global K.ATS chief. PYMNTS's CPI wire ran the notice the same week.

"Dr Hunt is an advanced analytics leader and economist with 20 years of experience using rigorous analytics in competition, regulation and business strategy. Stefan will work closely with Andrea Coscelli and Cristina Caffarra."

The Caffarra–Coscelli–Hunt sequence reads as a six-month European build: first Caffarra, then the departing CMA chief executive, then the regulator's senior data-science lead. It was an incremental build, not a coordinated swoop. Over the next 18 months Keystone added Gianmarco Calanchi, and in April 2024 a round of principal economists from Spotify and Amazon. By mid-2024 the London office had a visible European antitrust bench.

But Keystone lost more than Hunt. Cristina Caffarra left Keystone in 2023, about a year after joining, and did not move to a rival. She became Honorary Professor at UCL, co-founded the CEPR Competition Research Policy Network, and launched EuroStack and the Escape Forward podcast, a portfolio retirement that reads less like exit and more like reinvention. Two years on, Keystone lost Gianmarco Calanchi as well. Calanchi had spent a decade at the OFT and CMA running Phase I and Phase II merger reviews, crossed to Compass Lexecon as a Vice President, then joined Keystone in 2023 as part of the European build, then joined Econic Partners as a Partner in London in 2025. His arc is a single loop through the market: public sector, Compass Lexecon, Keystone, Econic. Five firms, 15 years, one man.

Of the four economists Keystone named as its European leadership between November 2022 and early 2023, Caffarra, Calanchi, Coscelli, Hunt, three were gone by the end of 2025. Caffarra to UCL, Calanchi to Econic, Hunt to AlixPartners; Coscelli remained the exception in this article's source set. AlixPartners is a US-headquartered turnaround firm whose ownership history includes a 2012 CVC recapitalisation and a 2016 ownership change in which CDPQ, PSP Investments, Investcorp and Jay Alix agreed to acquire stakes from CVC in a transaction valuing AlixPartners at more than $2.5 billion. The public announcements reviewed here show no equivalent named London competition-economics build before October 2024. Against that institutional-capital backdrop, AlixPartners attempted a rapid senior-hire build, Mazzarotto, Wilkinson, Bon and Hunt inside 14 months, in a way a smaller partner-owned firm might struggle to match.

Section 3: The AlixPartners build

The public announcements reviewed here show AlixPartners' named London competition-economics build beginning in October 2024. Between October 2024 and December 2025 the firm made three senior-hire announcements and rebuilt the practice around a new brand.

Nicola Mazzarotto and Caitlin Wilkinson crossed over from KPMG in October 2024; Julie Bon, the CMA's then-Deputy Chief Economist, joined in June 2025; and on 2 December 2025 Companies House filed Stefan Hunt as an LLP member, with the firm's own press release following the next day. Hunt was to lead a new practice named, with corporate precision, Behavioural Economics and Technology Evidence. The name tells you the bet. AlixPartners wanted a data and behavioural competition capability, and it was buying the people who had built the CMA's.

Keystone lost Hunt to a direct rival less than three years after hiring him from the CMA. Read one way, the move validates Keystone's bet that CMA data-and-technology expertise could anchor a European platform. Read the other way, Keystone became part of the same lateral market it had used to build the platform. Hunt carried his skills and his network with him to AlixPartners. The public record does not show his economics; it shows why his appointment mattered.

Section 4: Compass Lexecon and the second exit

The largest movement in this article's documented 2025 move set was not a CMA departure at all; it was the Econic Partners breakaway from Compass Lexecon. On 15 February 2024, Compass Lexecon named new EMEA leadership: Lorenzo Coppi, Neil Dryden and Kirsten Edwards-Warren became co-heads, while Jorge Padilla, who had run the European practice since arriving from LECG in 2011, moved to Chair. The firm called it a succession plan. A year later it read as the prologue to a much larger UK economics-firm departure.

On 19 February 2025, Jonathan Orszag, Mark Israel and Kirsten Edwards-Warren, one of the co-heads named 12 months earlier, launched Econic Partners. Israel formally joined on 2 April 2025. Goldman Sachs Alternatives, the Willig family and the Ordover family financed the launch. Robert Willig and Janusz Ordover are the Princeton economists who founded COMPASS in 2003; FTI bought COMPASS and merged it with Lexecon in 2008 to create Compass Lexecon. In this reading, the families who founded the firm that became Compass Lexecon also financed the breakaway that took part of its senior team. Econic's profile for Enrique Andreu now lists him as a founding partner in Brussels and Madrid and says he previously spent more than 10 years at Compass Lexecon, including as EMEA Head of People and Head of the Brussels office. The official FTI-side story of the 2025 segment headwind sits in Part 5, Section 4.

Econic's London office is built on Compass Lexecon alumni. Kirsten Edwards-Warren is a founding partner and one of the two Companies House directors of record. Andy Parkinson spent over a decade at Compass Lexecon, rising to Senior Vice President, before moving to Econic as a Partner in London and Brussels. Rameet Sangha has the most unusual path of the four.

Sangha joined Compass Lexecon in January 2020 from AlixPartners, where she had been a Director. Five years on, she left Compass Lexecon for Econic. Her career connects AlixPartners, Compass Lexecon and Econic as nodes in the same recruiting circuit, and it quietly undermines the tidy version of the AlixPartners story told in the previous section. The firm now building a competition-economics practice by hiring from the CMA and from Keystone was, in 2020, losing a senior director to Compass Lexecon. The rotation has been running in both directions for at least six years.

Compass Lexecon is not folding. Padilla stays as Chair; the firm retains a deep European bench and the most visible caseload in EU antitrust; on 21 April 2025 it hired Faten Sabry as a Senior Managing Director in New York, after 27 years at NERA where she had chaired the Global Securities and Finance Practice. But the Sabry hire reinforced the US securities-valuation side of the business rather than London antitrust, and Compass Lexecon has not publicly replaced the London partners it lost to Econic. In this series' source set, the Econic launch is the largest documented UK economics-team breakaway since Ridyard, Bishop and Baker founded RBB in 2002. What separates Econic from RBB is the money. Ridyard, Bishop and Baker bootstrapped. Econic launched with institutional financing announced from the start.

Section 5: Grant Thornton quietly opens a door

The CMA is not the only source pool. Another notable new entrant into London competition economics came in through a side door marked Alvarez & Marsal. On 9 November 2021, Grant Thornton UK launched a new Economics Consulting practice by hiring Schellion Horn and a second partner (Chris Williams, per the contemporaneous press reporting), both from A&M. Horn had spent 20 years in competition economics, moving through FTI, Deloitte, PwC and A&M; Williams had 13 years at KPMG before A&M. Robert Hannah, Grant Thornton's Head of Large and Complex Advisory, sponsored the hire. Horn and Williams positioned the new team around regulated-industry work, competition and state-aid cases, the space between the Big Four and the boutiques. The public launch materials present the practice as new in November 2021; by 2024, Horn's team was bidding against Oxera, Frontier and CRA. Two partner hires gave Grant Thornton a visible economics offer.

A few years later, AlixPartners used a related hiring mechanism. A firm without a visible standalone London economics brand decided it wanted one, found the people who could bring the brand in a box, and hired them. Grant Thornton hired from A&M. AlixPartners hired from KPMG, the CMA and Keystone. The source pool differs. The mechanic is similar, not identical.

Section 5b: The revolving door is wider than the CMA

The CMA is the most visible source in the regulator-to-consultancy pipeline, but a systematic search of Companies House officer filings across the major UK economics houses shows a revolving door that reaches well beyond a single regulator. Brussels is one of the rooms it opens onto.

The EU pipeline

Two senior officials from DG Competition have crossed to UK economics boutiques. Sir Philip Lowe, Director-General of EU DG Competition from 2002 to 2010, appeared briefly as an LLP member of Oxera Consulting LLP between May and August 2019; a quiet three-month stint visible because the registrar records LLP appointments. Miguel de la Mano, once acting Chief Economist at DG Competition, joined RBB Economics LLP as a member in May 2022 and remains there. Oxera added Helene Bourguignon, another ex-DG Competition economist, as an LLP member from November 2021. Brussels is a source pool the CMA framing underweights.

The utility-regulator pipeline

Joe Perkins, former Chief Economist at Ofgem, joined FTI Consulting LLP as an LLP member on 4 June 2024. His Companies House trail also includes a directorship at the Regulatory Policy Institute in Oxford (April 2020 to January 2023) and an ongoing board seat at Sustainability First, an energy-regulation charity. The Ofgem-to-FTI path resembles the CMA-to-AlixPartners path Stefan Hunt later took: senior regulator leaves, joins a US-parented multi-practice firm as a partner. William Rickett CB, former Director General for Energy at BERR and DECC (the forerunners of BEIS), joined CEPA LLP as a designated member in August 2019, and has been a director of the parent company since 2012. CEPA is a specialist regulatory-economics house advising Ofwat, Ofgem, and the National Infrastructure Commission, bodies Rickett once oversaw.

The OFT and the dual-role model

Professor Amelia Fletcher, former Chief Economist at the OFT, demonstrates a third variant: the simultaneous dual role. Fletcher served as a non-executive director of the FCA from April 2013 to March 2020 and of the Payment Systems Regulator over the same period, while simultaneously running Coreco Economics Ltd, her own consultancy, from June 2013 onwards. The regulator seat and the private practice overlapped for seven years. The arrangement is legal, publicly declared on the FCA register, and common at senior levels in UK financial regulation. It is also a structural feature of this market that the Part 7 chord diagram does not yet capture.

The full picture from Companies House

Across the ten consultancies searched, Companies House officer filings document 13 confirmed regulator-or-government-to-consultancy moves.

Section 6: What the private-equity deals are pricing

Behind the people moves the capital tables have been filling up, quietly and without much press. The project file now contains a 15-event shortlist of platform recapitalisations, acquisitions and launch financings in or adjacent to UK economics consulting. The table below runs from AlixPartners' 2006 recapitalisation through Flint's December 2025 reported buyout valuation.

Capital Economics tells a clear returns story. LDC took a minority stake in 2014; Phoenix took control in 2018 at a valuation of circa £95 million; LDC said the exit returned 2.5× money and a 43 per cent IRR. Fund committees pay attention to numbers like that. The buyer thesis itself remains private, but the public account rows show why a research-led economics business with recurring clients and healthy margins can interest sponsors.

Cinven agreed a majority investment in Flint Global in December 2025. Cinven said financial details were not disclosed. The official evidence supports the transaction, the buyer, the majority-investment structure, the sector thesis and the continued founder involvement, but not a public valuation or EV/EBITDA multiple. Ed Richards, the former Ofcom chief executive, and Sir Simon Fraser, formerly the FCO permanent secretary, remained significant shareholders and active partners. Capital Economics in 2014 is the first UK economics-firm private-equity row in this project's deal file; Flint in 2025 is a later policy-advisory capital event with the valuation deliberately left blank in the public source set.

Section 7: Three PE strategies, one market

Private equity is not doing one thing in economics consulting. It is doing three distinct things, and the distinction matters for how the market evolves.

Strategy 1: Buying subscription and advisory businesses for their cash flow

Capital Economics (LDC 2014, Phoenix 2018) and Flint Global (Cinven 2025) look like classic private-equity plays: recurring revenue, high margins, low capex, defensible client relationships. PE buys these for the same reason it buys many professional-services firms: the economics are attractive. The product happens to be economics consulting, but the thesis is cash-flow durability and expansion potential, not a romantic bet on the discipline.

Strategy 2: Funding breakaways to capture talent arbitrage

Econic Partners (Goldman Sachs Alternatives, February 2025) is a different animal. Goldman did not buy an existing firm; the launch release says Goldman Sachs Alternatives and the Willig and Ordover families provided financing for a team walking out of an incumbent. The bet was that the talent, Orszag, Israel, Edwards-Warren, would take the clients with them, and that the value of a named competition economist is higher as the founding partner of a new firm than as an employee of FTI's subsidiary. The Willig and Ordover families' co-investment is part of that reading: they built the predecessor firm, then backed the breakaway team. In this project's documented UK sequence, RBB's 2002 NERA breakaway appears as a founder-financed partnership formation, while Econic launched with institutional financing already announced. That involvement compresses the timeline and raises the stakes.

Strategy 3: Buying platforms and bolting on economics practices

AlixPartners (Hellman & Friedman 2006, CVC 2012, CDPQ/PSP/Investcorp announced in 2016 at more than $2.5 billion) and BRG (Endeavour Capital 2017, TowerBrook Capital Partners February 2025) are restructuring and disputes shops building economics practices inside private-equity-backed shells. AlixPartners hired Stefan Hunt and Julie Bon from the CMA; the public record does not show whether its private-equity owners directed a competition-economics build, but the existing platform had the client relationships and balance sheet to absorb senior hires. A smaller partner-owned firm without that balance sheet might find it harder to make three senior competition-economics hires in 14 months. BRG is the same story from the other direction. TowerBrook announced a majority equity investment in February 2025, the same month Econic launched. BRG already had the LECG DNA and a loss-making UK operation; TowerBrook's capital gives BRG more room to absorb UK losses while it builds scale. Two of the most visible structural events in this project's 2025 file happened within days of each other: Goldman backed a breakaway from Compass Lexecon, and TowerBrook recapitalised the firm built from LECG's wreckage.

The combined effect

A decade ago, the most visible externally capitalised economics firms in the UK were subsidiaries of listed corporates: FTI/Compass Lexecon (NYSE: FCN), CRA (NASDAQ: CRAI), and NERA (Marsh & McLennan, NYSE: MMC). The current project ledger shows private-equity or institutional money behind several of the largest firms or adjacent platforms in the dataset. The ownership structure visible in the public record has shifted from a simple founder-partnership story toward a mix of listed-parent subsidiaries, sponsor-backed platforms and funded breakaways. The implication is that the PE story told in the earlier parts of this series was too narrow; it risked reading as a single origin tale, with PE entering economics consulting in 2014 through LDC's investment into Capital Economics and buying ever since. The fuller picture is more layered. The project file first shows a specialist economics-cash-flow PE story in 2014, then a talent-backed launch-financing row in 2025, alongside platform-capital cases that compete for the same economists since at least the AlixPartners/Hellman & Friedman transaction in 2006. Three different strategies, one market; and the combined effect is that many of the new hires, breakaways, and senior departures described in this series now have institutional capital on at least one side of the transaction.

Section 8: The talent reallocation

Between January 2023 and December 2025, the documented move set shows senior economists being reallocated across firms rather than a large new cohort entering from outside. In this article's source set, the CMA lost named leaders to private practice; Compass Lexecon lost a large group of economists to Econic; Keystone hired Stefan Hunt and lost him to AlixPartners less than three years later. AlixPartners and Grant Thornton built new competition-economics practices by hiring existing senior people, while Cinven, Phoenix, Stonehaven, Goldman Sachs, TowerBrook, News Corp and McKinsey supplied acquisition or launch capital to platforms that employed adjacent policy, regulatory and expert-economics teams. The firms are growing by training, recruiting rivals, and recruiting from the regulator. The visible price of platforms with scarce senior expertise has risen at the same time.

The UK launches tracked in this window, Econic, Pragmatix, Stonehaven's roll-up, started with founders who were already partners somewhere else. In this project's documented launch set, the first-time founding that built RBB in 2002, Vivid in 2006, and Flint in 2015 is not visible in the last three years. The market, as seen in this source set, appears to be consolidating into a fight between incumbents for a scarce stock of senior talent, with private-equity money now backing platforms that may need the senior-talent flow to continue. That dependence should be treated as a question, not a fact. Public-sector pay scales do not look close to senior-partner economics in the firms hiring from the regulator; the harder question is how the market looks if the pipeline slows. The CMA appointed Hunt to a top digital role in 2018; the article's documented exits show named members of that data-and-economics cohort already leaving. Whether the next cohort reaches partner-level seniority fast enough is an open question, not a filing fact.

What to watch for in 2026

Three things to track. One watch item is Compass Lexecon. Succession discipline after a breakaway helps decide whether the departure is a dent or a shock; the public signal to watch is whether another wave of senior exits appears. Second, what Cinven does with Flint. Private-equity owners of advisory firms often look for consolidation, and Capital Economics is one precedent: a 2014 LDC minority investment followed by Phoenix control in 2018. If Flint becomes a roll-up platform for mid-sized UK policy shops, the lower half of the 90-firm list may change materially. Third, Stefan Hunt. The public record now shows the CMA, Keystone and AlixPartners sequence; what matters next is whether receiving firms can hold the scarce specialists they hire.