Who Owns PA Consulting?

PA was founded in London in 1943 as Personnel Administration by Ernest E. Butten, Tom H. Kirkham, and Dr. David Seymour. The three had developed a human-centered approach to raising productivity, applying scientific management with attention to the worker, and they deployed it in Britain's wartime munitions factories, including training women to assemble bomber components.

The firm dropped its original name for P.A. Management Consultants in 1964, then became PA Consulting Group. Through the postwar decades PA expanded internationally, and by 1970 it was the world's largest management consultancy by headcount. Ernest Butten transferred ownership to an employee trust in 1958, embedding the staff ownership culture that persisted for more than half a century.

PA combined strategy consulting with an unusual applied sciences arm. Its technology and product development centers produced work ranging from the first reliable pregnancy test kits to telecom network equipment and the iPredict system for predicting failures in underground power cables.

Private equity entered the picture in 2015 when Carlyle bought a 51% stake at a valuation near $1 billion, ending pure employee ownership. Jacobs' 65% acquisition in 2021 replaced Carlyle and put PA inside an engineering giant, and the March 2026 completion made it wholly owned. Under CEO Christian Norris, appointed in 2023, the firm posted double-digit revenue growth through 2025 and into 2026, including 17% year-over-year growth in Jacobs' fiscal second quarter.