As I reported two months ago, the Carlyle Group, the world’s largest and most powerful private equity fund, will buy the government contracting business of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the nation’s largest intelligence contractors. The word went out today from Booz Allen, and is being reported in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
For background on both Carlyle and Booz Allen, go to my March 8 profile of both companies in CorpWatch. This is a very significant deal, and puts Carlyle – which in recent years has reduced its holdings in defense – back into the intelligence game, big time.
In 2006, Booz Allen Hamilton, a privately held company based in McLean, Virginia, had a global staff of 18,000 and annual revenues of $3.7 billion. Its work for U.S. government agencies accounts for more than 50 percent of its business. Notably Booz Allen is a key adviser and prime contractor to all of the major U.S. intelligence agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Security Agency (NSA), and – as well as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Defense and most of the Pentagon’s combatant commands. On its website, Booz Allen describes its intelligence work as part of its broader expertise in information technology. “Whether dealing with homeland security, peacekeeping operations, or the battlefield, success depend on the ability to collect, safeguard, store, distribute, fuse, and share information – on getting the right information to the right place at the right time,” it says. “Our security professionals work in partnership with clients to develop capabilities … for protecting information and networks against cyber and physical threat.”
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