Leonard Green near Cumming buyout
Private equity firm Leonard Green is reported to be close to a roughly $3 billion acquisition of construction consultancy Cumming Group, a sign of ongoing sponsor consolidation in professional services. The reported transaction highlights sponsor appetite for scale buys in fragmented, fee‑driven service sectors. (x.com)
Leonard Green & Partners is nearing a deal to buy Cumming Group from New Mountain Capital at a valuation of about $3 billion including debt, according to reports published April 12. (ft.com) Bloomberg, citing the Financial Times, reported the transaction is close but not yet announced. The buyer is Leonard Green, a Los Angeles private equity firm, and the seller is New Mountain, which has owned Cumming since 2021. (bloomberg.com, newmountaincapital.com) Cumming is not a contractor that pours concrete or erects steel. It sells project management and cost consulting, helping developers, institutions, and companies keep large building programs on schedule and on budget. (cumming-group.com, newmountaincapital.com) New Mountain’s portfolio page says Cumming serves more than 1,500 customers, employs more than 2,000 people, and operates from more than 60 offices. Cumming’s own locations page now says it has more than 2,500 team members and has worked on projects in more than 100 countries. (newmountaincapital.com, cumming-group.com) That growth has been acquisition-driven as well as organic. Cumming announced its partnership with New Mountain in November 2021, then added firms including Amicon Management in Florida in 2023, LeftField in New England in November 2025, and Seneca Group in October 2025. (cumming-group.com, cumming-group.com, constructiondive.com, senecagroup.com) The appeal for buyout firms is the revenue model. Project and cost consultants collect fees from long construction pipelines in sectors such as education, healthcare, technology, infrastructure, and data centers, without taking the direct balance-sheet risk of a builder. (newmountaincapital.com, capstonepartners.com) The timing also lines up with a broader push to combine professional-services firms into larger platforms. Industry advisers and deal trackers have pointed to steady consolidation in engineering, consulting, and construction services as private equity buyers chase scale, cross-selling, and denser regional footprints. (artemisorigination.com, capstonepartners.com) For Leonard Green, the target fits a services-heavy playbook. The firm says it manages about $85 billion and focuses primarily on services, including business services and healthcare, with more than 160 investments since inception. (leonardgreen.com, leonardgreen.com) If the deal is signed in the coming weeks, it would mark a clean handoff of a scaled construction-consulting platform from one private equity owner to another. The price tag suggests buyers still see room to build bigger fee-based firms even after four years of rapid expansion at Cumming. (ft.com, cumming-group.com)
