March 7, 2000 – Marakon Associates, the international management consulting firm, is bringing its highly successful focus on maximizing shareholder value to the Big Apple. This month, the firm opens an office in New York, at 245 Park Avenue and 46th Street. The new office is staffed by 50 consultants including Marakon’s chief executive and its managing partner for North America.

The New York office enables the firm to continue expanding its business in North America. "A presence in New York enhances our ability to serve our New York-based clients as well as continue to build relationships within the broader New York business community," says Ron Langford, Managing Partner for North America. "It also helps us meet the preferences of our employees, since an increasing number of the people we recruit want to both work and live in New York."

The opening in New York caps a decade of tremendous expansion for Marakon, which generated 25% annual compound growth in revenue and 15% to 20% in headcount growth during the 1990’s. Firm officials ascribe this success in part to growing acceptance by large, diversified public companies of the need to focus all of their activities around the goal of maximizing shareholder value.

Marakon coined the phrase and pioneered the practice of "Value Based Management," which enables companies to institutionalize this goal. The firm’s success over the past 20 years in applying VBM principles has brought it long-term consulting assignments from the top managements of some of the world’s largest and most profitable companies, including Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Boeing and, in the UK, Lloyds TSB, The Boots Co. and Cadbury-Schweppes. In a Sept. 1998 feature story, Fortune called Marakon "the best-kept secret in consulting" and "among the half-dozen firms that form the elite in strategy consulting."

Marakon now has five branches worldwide, including Stamford, Conn., Chicago, San Francisco and London, with a total of 250 consultants.

For further information, or to arrange an interview with a Marakon partner, please contact David Fondiller at (212) 377-5016