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History
On May 21, 2007, the shareholders of EMG unanimously signed an agreement to become
a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cardno. The integration of EMG with Cardno allows for
immediate expansion of Cardno's footprint in the global development consulting market
and strong future growth. EMG's development consulting experience complements Cardno's
engineering competencies. This synergy can be applied for local capacity development
in physical and social infrastructure projects globally.
EMG has been in the development consulting business for nearly 25 years. EMG was
established as a specialist unit within the consulting practice of Deloitte in Washington
DC in late 1982. It was known as the International Lending Agencies Group (ILA)
and changed its name in 1997 to Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Emerging Markets.
It remained a practice within Deloitte until it was separated through a management
buyout in 2004 becoming EMG.
The international development consulting practice was set up at a time when development
experts and donor agencies were beginning to turn their attention to the private
sector as an integral component of the development process. The focus of the business
was in countries where local Deloitte presence and donor-funded projects could bring
opportunities to develop local expertise. When privatization took off after 1987,
EMG was well placed with its Deloitte support to become leading providers of expertise
to many governments ranging from Malawi to Hungary to Russia. Similarly, when the
Asian Financial crisis emerged in 1997, EMG played a vital role in the turnaround
process in Thailand, Indonesia and Korea.
In 1987, EMG also began working in the health sector, with a focus on leveraging
private sector resources. In 1992, EMG was awarded the first of two major USAID
private sector health projects and as part of these projects EMG ran an innovative
venture capital fund targeted to bring new private sector investors into commercially
sustainable family planning and maternal health operations. This experience has
translated into a health practice that is well recognized for its private sector
expertise.
In 1997, EMG merged with the development consulting units of Deloitte Canada and
Deloitte Europe with offices in Guelph, Ontario and Brussels, respectively. Shortly
thereafter the London office was opened. As a result, EMG has
gained extensive experience with a broad range of donor clients, including World
Bank, USAID, EU, DFID, ADB, AfDB, EBRD, IDB, OPIC,UNDP, WTO, Global Fund and many
others. Likewise, the practice has worked at one time or another in virtually every
developing country.
While focused on the private sector, EMG has long been active in public sector reform.
During the post Idi Amin regime in Uganda, EMG developed a system to enable the
Ministry of Planning to track and monitor all donor funded projects in the country.
EMG played a major role in Brazil and Colombia in establishing the regulatory framework
for public private partnerships in the water sector. In electricity reform, EMG
has been active in several states in India, including Andhra Pradesh as well as
successfully leading the privatization of the distribution sectors in Ukraine and
Moldova.
The Brussels team has a very successful track record as project managers of large
multi-country EU funded projects including AsiaInvest and, most recently, the Trade
Development Project for the ACP Secretariat. In the trade sphere, EMG also manages
the Post WTO Accession Technical support project in China and in e-government, the
Information Society project, also in China.
The London practice brought in the Tourism Consulting division of Deloitte and this
very specialized team has extensive experience particularly in strategic planning
and sustainable tourism. In 2005, EMG completed 9 years of work in developing the
Namibian tourism sector, including the construction of the country’s first community
owned lodge and capacity building for the Tourism Development Board amongst many
other tasks.
EMG has also played an important role in post conflict situations, starting, in
1984, with the planning and computerization of the election system for the first
democratic presidential elections in El Salvador. In the mid 1980’s, EMG developed
tracking and monitoring systems for grain movements from Port Sudan to Darfur during
the food emergencies. In 1999, EMG led efforts to wind up the pyramid schemes that
had caused a national collapse in Albania, successfully recovering substantial funds
and helping the country reestablish the rule of law. In the last few years, EMG
established a full scale small business bank in Kosovo and helped the Palestinian
Authority strengthen its financial controls to enable the release of over $700 million
in withheld taxes from the Israeli authorities. Currently EMG manages the major
land reform and privatization project in Afghanistan for USAID (www.ltera.org)
and is engaged in capacity building in Iraq.
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