The CMA Drain

Five senior CMA economists made six documented moves into private practice. Stefan Hunt links the CMA, Keystone and AlixPartners. Their destinations reveal where the capital was waiting.

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. The entry was as starchy as the register: Stefan Alexis Hunt; no title, fanfare or explanation.

In January 2023, less than three years earlier, Hunt had joined Keystone Strategy as head of K.ATS Europe, its new Advanced Technology Services arm. Less than a year before that, he was still at the Competition and Markets Authority. Over nearly five years he had helped build its Data and Technology Unit into one of the world’s more advanced competition-regulator analytics teams. Three institutions in three years. The filing says almost nothing; the sequence says plenty.

Alone, Hunt’s move looks like an ambitious economist changing firms. Beside the other moves in the same three-year window, it forms a cluster. Since Andrea Coscelli stepped down as chief executive, five senior CMA economists have made six landings at four private firms. Coscelli and Hunt went to Keystone; Walker to Frontier; Sala to Oxera; and Bon, followed by Hunt again, to AlixPartners.

Capital was moving too. Cinven took a majority stake in Flint Global on undisclosed terms; Goldman Sachs Alternatives financed Econic. This article reads the people and the money together. It does not mistake their correlation for a fact about causation.

Section 1: The regulator as recruiter

The CMA employs around 1,160 staff: 1,157 on payroll and five off it in December 2024. Since the OFT and Competition Commission merged in 2014, the authority has invested heavily in analytics and behavioural methods. Andrea Coscelli led it from 2016 to 2022. By his departure, the chief economist’s team had become a conspicuous training ground for the competition economists in this move set.

Since Coscelli left, five senior economists have moved from that team into private practice. Each move has a named announcement and a date.

The CMA alumni did not converge on one kind of firm. Coscelli and Hunt joined a Boston strategy boutique; Walker an employee-owned regulatory specialist; Sala an Oxford competition house; and Bon an American turnaround adviser. Different ownership and sales pitches concealed the same appetite for regulatory expertise. Hunt appears twice because he moved twice: first from the CMA to Keystone, then to AlixPartners in December 2025. His second move connects the public-sector pipeline to AlixPartners’ 14-month competition build.

Section 2: The Keystone European build

Greg Richards and Professor Marco Iansiti founded Keystone Strategy in Boston in 2003. For two decades, London remained a small outpost serving the American parent’s big-tech antitrust work. From 2022 the hiring record shows Keystone turning it into a broader European platform.

The build came in three steps. Cristina Caffarra joined Keystone in July 2022 after more than a decade leading Charles River Associates’ European competition practice. She was the anchor. On 29 November 2022, roughly six months later, Keystone announced that outgoing CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli would become joint head of Europe on 3 January 2023. Britain’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments approved the move in a formal letter.

Eight weeks later, on 24 January 2023, Keystone said Stefan Hunt would lead K.ATS Europe, reporting to the unit’s global chief, Rohit Chatterjee. PYMNTS’s CPI wire carried the notice that 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."

Caffarra, Coscelli and Hunt arrived over six months: a practice anchor, a departing CMA chief and the regulator’s senior data-science lead. This was an incremental build, not one raid. During the next 18 months Keystone added Gianmarco Calanchi and, in April 2024, principal economists from Spotify and Amazon. By mid-2024 London had a visible European antitrust bench.

Keystone lost more than Hunt. Cristina Caffarra left in 2023, about a year after joining, but not for a rival. She became an honorary professor at UCL, co-founded the CEPR Competition Research Policy Network, and launched EuroStack and the Escape Forward podcast. It looked less like retirement than reinvention.

Two years later Keystone also lost Gianmarco Calanchi. He had spent a decade at the OFT and CMA running Phase I and Phase II merger reviews, then joined Compass Lexecon as a vice-president. In 2023 he moved to Keystone; in December 2024 he became an Econic partner in London. His 15-year route runs through five institutions: public sector, Compass Lexecon, Keystone and Econic among them.

Keystone assembled four European leaders in 2022 and 2023: Caffarra, Calanchi, Coscelli and Hunt. Three had gone by the end of 2025. Caffarra moved to UCL, Calanchi to Econic and Hunt to AlixPartners. Coscelli is the exception in this article’s source set.

AlixPartners is an American turnaround firm with institutional capital behind it. Its ownership history includes a CVC recapitalisation in 2012 and a 2016 transaction in which CDPQ, PSP Investments, Investcorp and Jay Alix agreed to buy stakes from CVC. That deal valued the firm at more than $2.5 billion.

The announcements reviewed here show no comparable London competition build before October 2024. Then AlixPartners hired Mazzarotto, Wilkinson, Bon and Hunt within 14 months. A smaller partner-owned firm might have struggled to finance the same speed.

Section 3: The AlixPartners build

AlixPartners’ named London competition build began in October 2024. Between October 2024 and December 2025 it made three senior-hire announcements and recast the practice under a new label.

Nicola Mazzarotto and Caitlin Wilkinson arrived from KPMG in October 2024. Julie Bon, formerly the CMA’s deputy chief economist, joined as a senior adviser in June 2025; she had left the agency in September 2024. On 2 December 2025 Companies House recorded Stefan Hunt as an LLP member. The firm’s announcement followed a day later.

Hunt would lead Behavioural Economics and Technology Evidence—a name of magnificent corporate precision. It also states the wager. AlixPartners wanted data and behavioural expertise in competition cases, so it hired people who had built it at the CMA.

Keystone lost Hunt to a direct rival less than three years after hiring him from the CMA. The move validates Keystone’s original bet on regulatory data expertise. It also shows how quickly the lateral market can consume its own builders. Hunt took his skills and network to AlixPartners. The public record does not disclose his pay; it makes the strategic value of the appointment plain.

Section 4: Compass Lexecon and the second exit

The largest documented move of 2025 did not involve the CMA. It was Econic’s breakaway from Compass Lexecon. On 15 February 2024, Compass Lexecon named new EMEA leaders: Lorenzo Coppi, Neil Dryden and Kirsten Edwards-Warren became co-heads. Jorge Padilla, who had led Europe since arriving from LECG in 2011, became chair. Compass called it succession. A year later it looked like a prologue.

On 19 February 2025, Jonathan Orszag, Mark Israel and Kirsten Edwards-Warren launched Econic Partners. Edwards-Warren had become a Compass co-head 12 months earlier. Israel joined formally in spring 2025 after winding down his Compass presidency. Goldman Sachs Alternatives and the Willig and Ordover families financed the launch.

Robert Willig and Janusz Ordover, economists at Princeton and NYU respectively, founded COMPASS in 2003; both have since died. FTI bought the firm and merged it with Lexecon in 2008. Their families thus helped finance a breakaway from the business their predecessors had built.

Econic’s profile for Enrique Andreu calls him a founding partner in Brussels and Madrid. It says he spent more than 10 years at Compass Lexecon, including as EMEA head of people and head of Brussels. FTI’s account of the resulting 2025 segment headwind appears in Part 5, Section 4.

Compass Lexecon alumni form Econic’s London core. Kirsten Edwards-Warren is a founding partner and one of its two Companies House directors. Andy Parkinson spent more than a decade at Compass, rising to senior vice-president, before joining Econic as a partner in London and Brussels. Rameet Sangha took the less direct route.

Sangha joined Compass Lexecon in January 2020 from AlixPartners, where she had been a director. Five years later she left for Econic. Her path connects all three firms and complicates any tidy account of AlixPartners as a new entrant. The firm now hiring from the CMA and Keystone lost a senior director to Compass Lexecon in 2020. The traffic has run both ways for at least six years.

Compass Lexecon is not folding. Padilla remains chair; the firm retains a deep European bench and a highly visible EU antitrust caseload. On 21 April 2025 it hired Faten Sabry as a senior managing director in New York. Sabry had spent 27 years at NERA and chaired its Global Securities and Finance Practice.

That hire strengthened American securities valuation, not London antitrust. Compass has not publicly replaced the London partners lost to Econic. In this series’ source set, Econic is the biggest documented UK economics-team breakaway since Ridyard, Bishop and Baker founded RBB in 2002. The difference is money: RBB’s founders bootstrapped; Econic announced institutional backing at launch.

Section 5: Grant Thornton quietly opens a door

The CMA is not the only source pool. Grant Thornton entered London competition economics through a side door marked Alvarez & Marsal. On 9 November 2021 it launched an Economics Consulting practice by hiring Schellion Horn and a second partner, identified in contemporary coverage as Chris Williams, from A&M.

The launch coverage gives Horn 20 years in competition economics across FTI, Deloitte, PwC and A&M. Williams had spent 13 years at KPMG before joining A&M. Robert Hannah, Grant Thornton’s head of Large and Complex Advisory, sponsored the hires. Horn and Williams positioned the team between the Big Four and the boutiques, serving regulated industries, competition and state-aid cases. The public materials presented the practice as new in November 2021; by 2024 it was bidding against Oxera, Frontier and CRA. Two partners had created a visible economics offer.

AlixPartners later used a related mechanism. A firm without a visible standalone London economics brand hired people capable of bringing one in a box. Grant Thornton recruited from A&M; AlixPartners from KPMG, the CMA and Keystone. Different pools, similar mechanics.

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

The CMA is the pipeline’s most visible source, not its only one. A search of Companies House officer filings across major UK economics firms finds a revolving door extending well beyond one regulator. One exit opens onto Brussels.

The EU pipeline

Two senior DG Competition officials crossed to UK boutiques. Sir Philip Lowe, the director-general from 2002 to 2010, was an Oxera LLP member from July 2018 to August 2019, then a senior adviser and board member. Miguel de la Mano, once the acting chief economist, joined RBB as a member in May 2022 and remains there. Oxera added Helene Bourguignon, another former DG Competition economist, as an LLP member in November 2021. A CMA-only framing underweights Brussels.

The utility-regulator pipeline

Joe Perkins, formerly Ofgem’s chief economist, joined FTI Consulting LLP as a member on 4 June 2024. Companies House also records his directorship at Oxford’s Regulatory Policy Institute. The route resembles Hunt’s later move from the CMA to AlixPartners: a senior regulator joins an American multi-practice firm as a partner.

William Rickett CB, formerly director-general for energy at BERR and DECC, has been a director of CEPA’s parent since March 2012. CEPA advises Ofwat, Ofgem and the National Infrastructure Commission—the sort of bodies Rickett once oversaw.

The OFT and the dual-role model

Professor Amelia Fletcher, a former OFT chief economist, represents a third model: simultaneous public and private roles. She was a non-executive director of the FCA from April 2013 to March 2020 and served the Payment Systems Regulator until 2020. At the same time, from June 2013, she ran Coreco Economics Ltd.

The regulatory seat and private practice overlapped for seven years. The arrangement was legal, declared on the FCA register and common at senior levels in financial regulation. It is also missing from the Part 7 chord diagram.

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

As the people moved, the capital table filled up with less fuss. The canonical 15-deal UK-entity list sits in the project’s pe_deals.csv. The selection below adds the AlixPartners and BRG corporate transactions that frame the story, and omits smaller bolt-ons. It runs from AlixPartners’ 2006 recapitalisation to Flint’s reported buyout valuation in December 2025.

Capital Economics supplies a clear returns story. LDC bought a minority stake in 2014; Phoenix took control in 2018 at about £95 million. LDC said its exit returned 2.5× money and a 43 per cent IRR. Fund committees notice numbers like those. The buyer’s thesis remains private, but recurring clients and healthy margins make the attraction of an economics-research business easy to see.

Cinven agreed a majority investment in Flint Global in December 2025. It did not disclose the financial terms. Official sources establish the buyer, majority structure, sector thesis and continuing founder involvement—but no valuation or EV/EBITDA multiple.

Ed Richards, formerly Ofcom’s chief executive, and Sir Simon Fraser, formerly the FCO’s permanent secretary, remained significant shareholders and active partners. Capital Economics in 2014 is the first private-equity row for a UK economics firm in this deal file. Flint in 2025 is the later policy-advisory transaction whose public valuation remains blank.

Section 7: Three PE strategies, one market

Private equity is pursuing three different strategies in economics consulting. The distinction will shape the market.

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

Capital Economics (LDC 2014, Phoenix 2018) and Flint Global (Cinven 2025) resemble classic buyouts: recurring revenue, high margins, low capital spending and durable client ties. The product is economics advice; the investment case is dependable cash flow and room to expand. No romance is required.

Strategy 2: Funding breakaways to capture talent arbitrage

Econic Partners (Goldman Sachs Alternatives, February 2025) is different. Goldman did not acquire a firm. The release says it and the Willig and Ordover families financed a team leaving an incumbent. The wager was that Orszag, Israel and Edwards-Warren would bring clients, and that a named competition economist is worth more as a founder than as an employee of an FTI subsidiary.

The Willig and Ordover families’ investment sharpens the point. Their predecessors built the predecessor firm; the families backed the breakaway. RBB’s 2002 departure from NERA appears in this project as founder-financed. Econic announced institutional money at birth. Capital compressed the timetable and raised the stakes.

Strategy 3: Buying platforms and bolting on economics practices

Two sponsor-backed disputes and restructuring platforms are adding economics. The first is AlixPartners (Hellman & Friedman 2006, CVC 2012, CDPQ/PSP/Investcorp announced in 2016 at more than $2.5 billion). The second is BRG (Endeavour Capital 2017, TowerBrook Capital Partners February 2025).

AlixPartners hired Stefan Hunt and Julie Bon from the CMA. The public record does not show whether its owners ordered the build. It does show a platform with the clients and balance sheet to absorb three senior competition hires in 14 months—something a small partnership might find harder.

BRG approaches from the other direction. TowerBrook announced a majority investment in February 2025, the month Econic launched. BRG already carried LECG’s DNA and a recently loss-making UK operation, back in profit in FY2024. TowerBrook supplied more room to invest while it scaled. Two of the project file’s most visible 2025 structural events happened within days: Goldman backed a Compass breakaway and TowerBrook recapitalised a firm built from LECG’s wreckage.

The combined effect

A decade ago, the most visible externally financed economics firms in Britain belonged to listed companies: FTI/Compass Lexecon (NYSE: FCN), CRA (NASDAQ: CRAI) and NERA (Marsh & McLennan, NYSE: MMC). The current ledger places private-equity or institutional money behind several large firms and adjacent platforms. The simple founder-partnership model has become a mix of listed subsidiaries, sponsor-backed platforms and funded breakaways.

The earlier parts of this series told too narrow a private-equity story. It began in 2014 with LDC’s investment in Capital Economics and risked suggesting one continuous buying spree. The fuller record has three layers. They are a specialist cash-flow investment in 2014; launch financing around talent in 2025; and platform capital competing for economists since the AlixPartners/Hellman & Friedman deal in 2006. Institutional money now sits on at least one side of many hires, departures and breakaways.

Section 8: The talent reallocation

Between January 2023 and December 2025, the documented moves mostly reallocated senior economists rather than introducing a large outside cohort. The CMA lost named leaders to private practice. Compass Lexecon lost a group to Econic. Keystone hired Stefan Hunt, then lost him to AlixPartners within three years.

AlixPartners and Grant Thornton built competition practices by hiring established people. Cinven, Phoenix, Stonehaven, Goldman Sachs, TowerBrook, News Corp and McKinsey supplied acquisition or launch capital to platforms employing adjacent policy, regulatory and expert-economics teams. Firms grew by training people, raiding rivals and recruiting regulators. At the same time, platforms holding scarce senior expertise became visibly more valuable.

The UK launches in this window—Econic and Stonehaven’s roll-up—began with founders who were already partners elsewhere. The first-time founding seen with RBB in 2002, Vivid in 2006 and Flint in 2015 does not appear in this project’s last three years. The market looks increasingly like a contest among incumbents for a fixed stock of senior talent, with private equity backing platforms that need that stock to replenish itself.

That dependence is a question, not a fact. Public-sector pay does not approach senior-partner economics at the firms recruiting regulators. The harder question is what happens if the pipeline slows. The CMA appointed Hunt to a leading digital role in 2018; named members of that data-and-economics cohort have already left. Whether their successors reach partner-level seniority quickly enough remains unknown.

What to watch for in 2026

Three things bear watching. First, Compass Lexecon. Its succession discipline will decide whether Econic was a dent or a shock; another wave of senior exits would be the clearest public signal.

Second, Cinven’s plans for Flint. Advisory-firm owners often consolidate, and Capital Economics offers a precedent: LDC bought a minority in 2014; Phoenix took control in 2018. If Flint becomes a platform for acquiring mid-sized policy firms, the lower half of the 90-firm list could change substantially.

Third, Stefan Hunt. The public record traces his route from the CMA through Keystone to AlixPartners. The next test is whether the firms receiving scarce specialists can keep them.