Resigning his partnership at KPMG in January 1997 didn't mean that Ted Fernandez was headed for an early retirement. Fernandez, the top partner in the firm's Miami office, started his own consulting firm, AnswerThink, a month later, taking three other KPMG partners, including their chief technology officer, with him. Needless to say, his former employer wasn't too pleased - KPMG immediately slapped him with a lawsuit charging that the ex-partners planned their departures while at KPMG, used proprietary information to plan their new company, and violated their partnership agreements by soliciting KPMG clients and employees. (Fernandez had defected in the first place because KPMG had rejected his plan to spin off its consulting operations into a separate public company.) The suit was settled in May 1997, paving the way for AnswerThink's incorporation. As part of the settlement, however, AnswerThink agreed to not solicit business from any KPMG clients for two years.

The memory of AnswerThink's early legal tumult faded quickly, as Fernandez and his rapidly-growing list of consultants (many of whom were KPMG refugees) expanded their menu of IT consulting offerings by gobbling up three consulting firms by the end of 1997; by the end of 1999, the company had 11 offices across the U.S. and had acquired six more firms, including the fall 1999 merger with Think New Ideas, a New York City-based interactive marketing agency. The end of 1998 also ended AnswerThink's non-compete contract with KPMG; the firm immediately snapped up business from Fernandez's former employer. In an ironic twist, KPMG decided to float a partial IPO of its consultancy in January 1999 - its refusal to do so was the reason Fernandez had left the firm in 1997.

Public display

AnswerThink itself wasted no time going public. Its IPO, floated in May 1998, netted $38.5 million for the fledgling company. In November 1999, AnswerThink merged with THINK New Ideas to create one of the largest 'end-to-end' e-business solutions providers with over 1,600 employees in 16 offices across the country. Think New Ideas offices in Atlanta, Boston, London, New York, San Francisco and Torrence, CA changed their names to AnswerThink, while the remaining two offices in Seattle and Hollywood, CA kept the Think New Ideas name.