SCD Advisory acted as sell-side adviser to Future Friendly on their sale to EY Australia

Future Friendly will join the EY Australia team to lead a new business transformation offering, with Future Friendly co-founders Nick Gower and Jon Christensen joining the EY Australia partnership. The team of 41 will be based out of Sydney and Canberra, and will service clients across Oceania.

Future Friendly is a digital product and service design studio providing human-centred research, prototyping, design and development services to assist organisations in taking ambitious new services to market. Their design and development projects run the gamut from innovative and customer-centric websites and apps, right through to entirely new business service propositions. Their unique combination of strategic design and product development allows them to work with clients to define new strategies and then design, build and launch new services that deliver measurable impact against agreed business, customer and community outcomes.

Future Friendly has established itself over 17 years as a proven brand in the Asia-Pacific market, having won 27 Good Design Awards, including Good Design Team of the Year.

Bringing together design-led multidisciplinary teams across strategy, transformation, compliance, regulation, technology and data to help clients define product strategies and design, build and launch new services, the team will work from a dedicated collaborative studio to develop solutions to clients’ most complex, critical and urgent problems. The aim is to bridge the gap between strategy and execution – keeping the customer at the centre and going beyond concept development and design, right through to building, testing and real-world implementation.

Grant Peters, EY Financial Services Managing Partner, Oceania said, “The addition of the Future Friendly team to our existing business transformation practice enhances our ability to bring our clients the deep industry knowledge and technical experience they need to address their biggest transformation challenges. The joining together of our two teams will create a compelling and innovative new offering in the market.”

Nick Gower, Co-founder of Future Friendly, said, “The design of everyday products and services has the power to change lives. After 17 years dedicated to delivering wellbeing at scale for communities through design, the next step for the Future Friendly team is a big but natural one. Joining EY will give us access to enormous capabilities in strategic and technology consulting, as well as deep industry insights. This puts us at the heart of the business conversations that will decide the future and positions us to design the products and services that will help shape all of our lives for the better.”

Anthony Robinson, EY Financial Services Consulting Leader, Oceania, said, “I am excited to welcome the team from Future Friendly to our Oceania practice and, in particular, to our growing business transformation team. This is another great example of our ongoing commitment to providing leading innovation, customer experience and digital design support to our clients, and will significantly enhance our footprint in the region. Our strategic ambition is to grow the practice across Oceania, and the calibre of the team at Future Friendly will assist us in achieving this ambition, as we work together to build a better working world.”

Nick Gower and Jon Christensen, Co-Founders of Future Friendly, added:

We and the team are excited to join EY for a new chapter of growth. Our clients can now take advantage of EY’s additional capabilities and allow us to broaden the transformational value we offer. We’d like to thank SCD Advisory for their guidance and advice throughout this transaction. Their sector expertise in consulting was demonstrated during this process and we benefited greatly from their knowledge of the M&A process.

Pierre Briand, Founder of SCD Advisory, concluded:

We were pleased to support Future Friendly on this transaction and wish them great success with their growth alongside EY. For SCD, this is our 4th deal of 2023 and notably with a Big 4 counterparty which is an area of specialisation for us. We are continuing to see strong interest in the strategy and design space where strategic acquisitions as such yield mutual benefits for both parties.

At SCD Advisory, we offer a range of services from deal preparation to transaction execution. Contact us at info@scdadvisory.com to find out more.