Adecco Group

The Adecco Group, the world's second-largest staffing company with approximately €22 billion in annual revenue (2021), had long been defined by its core temporary staffing business, which accounted for over 70% of group revenue. While Adecco was a global leader in general and professional staffing through its Adecco and LHH brands, the company had minimal presence in the fast-growing technology engineering and R&D consulting market — a segment valued at over €300 billion globally and growing at 7-10% annually, roughly double the growth rate of traditional staffing. Adecco's existing technology services arm, Modis, generated approximately €2.5 billion in revenue but was primarily a tech staffing business, not an engineering consulting firm. The company lacked the R&D engineering capabilities, embedded consulting relationships, and technology domain depth needed to compete with Capgemini Engineering, Alten, or Altran (acquired by Capgemini in 2020) for high-value engineering outsourcing contracts.

In 2022, Adecco made its decisive market entry move by acquiring Akka Technologies, a French-listed engineering and technology consulting firm, for approximately €2.0 billion and merging it with Modis to create Akkodis:

• Akka Technologies acquisition: Completed the €2.0 billion acquisition of Akka Technologies in early 2022. Akka brought approximately 20,000 engineering consultants with deep specialization in automotive, aerospace, defense, and industrial R&D — domains where Adecco had virtually no presence. Akka's client relationships included major European OEMs (BMW, Airbus, Daimler) that Adecco could not access through its staffing channels.
• Brand creation and integration: Merged Modis and Akka under the new Akkodis brand, creating a unified technology engineering entity with approximately 50,000 consultants and engineers across 30 countries. The rebrand signaled to the market that Adecco was serious about competing as a technology consulting company, not just a staffing agency.
• Service line restructuring: Organized Akkodis around four service lines — Consulting, Solutions, Talents, and Academy — replacing the fragmented geographic structure of the legacy businesses. This enabled Akkodis to pursue end-to-end engineering mandates combining strategy, implementation, and talent.
• Synergy capture: Realized approximately €25 million in synergies in the first year, primarily from real estate consolidation and shared overhead reduction, plus revenue synergies with a total contract value of approximately €90 million from cross-sell wins.
• Global Delivery Center expansion: Expanded offshore engineering delivery capabilities through new centers in India (including a new Chennai office), enabling Akkodis to compete on both expertise and cost for engineering outsourcing contracts.

• Revenue scale: Akkodis generated €3.7 billion in revenue in 2023, establishing itself as one of the world's largest technology engineering and consulting firms. This represented approximately 16% of Adecco Group's total revenue of €23.9 billion.
• Market position: Akkodis became a global top-5 engineering and technology services provider by revenue, transforming Adecco from a pure staffing company into a diversified human capital and technology services group.
• Synergy delivery: Total synergy run rate reached approximately €45 million in EBITA terms by end of 2022, ahead of the original target. Revenue synergies of €90 million in total contract value were secured.
• Revenue diversification: Technology engineering services shifted from a staffing-only model generating ~€2.5 billion to a consulting-inclusive model generating €3.7 billion, adding €1.2 billion in higher-margin engineering revenue.
• Market share gains: Adecco Group achieved strong market share gains with relative revenue growth of +550 basis points in Q4 2022, with the technology segment contributing to outperformance in France, DACH, and APAC.
• Timeframe: Akka acquisition completed in early 2022; Akkodis brand launched mid-2022; first full year of combined operations in 2023.

• Capgemini's 2020 acquisition of Altran validated the market opportunity and demonstrated the value creation thesis for combining engineering consulting with scaled delivery capabilities
• Akka Technologies was available at a reasonable valuation due to governance challenges and pandemic-related revenue disruption, creating an opportunistic entry point
• Adecco's existing Modis tech staffing business provided a foundation of client relationships and delivery infrastructure to accelerate Akka integration
• European automotive and industrial sectors' accelerating investment in electrification, autonomous driving, and Industry 4.0 created structural demand growth for engineering consulting services