The federal contractor landscape continues to evolve as evidenced by Congress’ recent passage of a $1.3 trillion budget and the ever-changing threat landscape. On Tuesday, June 5, 2018, Chuck Harrington, Parsons’ Chairman and CEO, participated in Houlihan Lokey’s 13th Annual Market Meets Market event, an informative discussion on the rapidly changing federal contractor landscape in 2018 and beyond.
Mr. Harrington was among the industry chief executive officers who sat on a panel—moderated by Susan Gabay, Managing Director of Houlihan Lokey—focused on the highly competitive mergers and acquisitions (M&A) environment. The other panel participants included Kevin M. Phillips, Chief Executive Officer and President, ManTech International Corporation, and Bill J. Weber, Chief Executive Officer and President, KeyW Corporation. Carey Smith, President of Parsons’ Federal business unit, was also in attendance at the Market Meets Market event, which took place in McLean, VA.
The M&A environment is a very active environment right now in terms of types and volumes of deals. The attributes of the most desirable businesses include demonstrated financial performance – both top- and bottom-line, technology differentiation, high employee retention, strong performance, and brand reputation.
For nearly 75 years, Parsons has continued to grow through organic and strategic acquisition. We have made several transformational acquisitions in the federal arena in the past 7 years, including SPARTA, Inc. in 2011, Secure Mission Solutions in 2014, and Williams Electric in 2017. Most recently, we acquired Polaris Alpha, the latest in our series of strategic investments focused on companies with technologies aligned to evolving threats in the land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains – areas that will continue to drive the market and remain a critical focus area for Parsons. Polaris Alpha is part of our Federal business unit, led by Ms. Smith. Parsons Federal protects and sustains critical U.S. government assets across the defense, physical/cyber security, intelligence, environment, and infrastructure markets worldwide, serving the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration, Intelligence Community, and other civil agency customers.
At Parsons, our perspective is that we must continue to deliver outstanding performance while remaining agile and differentiating ourselves from our competitors through our technologies, business models, and our people. To learn more about our strong acquisition history, visit our Acquisitions page.