Accenture Enhances Strategy Capabilities with Acquisition of Hagberg Consulting Group

NEW YORK; May 15, 2006 - Accenture (NYSE:ACN) has acquired Hagberg Consulting Group, a strategic consulting company specializing in the assessment of organizational culture and its alignment with corporate strategy.

Hagberg Consulting Group, along with its tools and programs, will become part of Accenture’s Strategy practice to support existing client offerings in areas such as corporate transformation, mergers and acquisitions and globalization.

Hagberg’s key assets include a benchmarking database comprising corporate culture data from hundreds of thousands of employees at more than 400 companies; a proprietary cultural assessment methodology; and Web-based survey tools. These assets help organizations identify the cultural characteristics that motivate employees and affect their ability to achieve their corporate strategies.

“In pursuit of their corporate strategies, companies go through an unprecedented array of disruptive business events such as mergers, divestitures and new executive leadership,” said Walt Shill, managing partner of Accenture’s Strategy practice. “To successfully transform themselves, organizations need to seamlessly adapt to these changes. The addition of Hagberg’s capabilities into Accenture’s Strategy practice provides clients with the proven expertise needed to prepare their organizations to achieve high performance.”

Accenture research has shown that an organization’s capacity to change is a critical driver of high performance, yet many companies struggle to unleash this source of value. For example, while executives identify creating an organization and culture that can adapt effectively to change as very important, few are satisfied with their organization’s capability in this area.

“Hagberg Consulting Group has a powerful suite of tools that enable us to gather extraordinary insights into the underlying cultural characteristics that drive an organization,” said Ana Dutra, managing partner of Accenture’s Organization & Change Strategy practice. “And since insights are derived from sophisticated data collection and supported by action-driven analytics and an unsurpassed database of information against which to normalize results, findings can be leveraged as a critical input to any significant organizational change initiative.”

"As part of Accenture’s Strategy practice, we look forward to bringing our market-tested tools to a broad range of leading businesses,” said Richard Hagberg, Ph.D., founder of Hagberg Consulting Group. “Accenture’s wide range of capabilities will enable us to help clients translate the insights from our analysis into meaningful programs that help them deliver successfully on their strategic initiatives.”

About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills and technologies to help clients improve their performance. With more than 129,000 people in 48 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$15.55 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2005. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

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Jill E. Posnick

+1 (917) 452 4947

jill.e.posnick@accenture.com