The Alta Group plans worldwide growth

For nearly two decades, the Alta Group built a thriving consulting practice based on its expertise in equipment financing and leasing.

But cultural knowledge is likely to be nearly as important as financial acumen as the Reno-based firm pursues its aggressive plans for growth during the next few years.

Already, more than two-thirds of the firm's consultants work from offices outside the United States, and Chief Executive Officer John Deane says The Alta Group's international business will continue to be an important source of growth.

And while understanding of differing business cultures around the world always is important to global companies, it's all the more important for companies such at The Alta Group whose success depends on top-level relationships.

"We're a corner-office consulting practice," says Deane. "We only work with senior people."

And it works only with senior executives in a fairly narrow niche companies that are involved in equipment leasing and financing, whether as stand-alone leasing companies or captive finance companies such as those owned by many manufacturers.

The 80 principals of the company 25 of them in the United States, the rest around the world provide counsel on subjects including mergers and acquisitions, finance and legal issues.

"We're essentially business doctors," says Deane.

In addition, more than 100,000 people worldwide have completed professional development courses in equipment leasing and finance delivered by The Alta Group.

For all that, The Alta Group's footprint in Reno is light.

Deane lives here because he likes it. The company contracts with an information technology company in the area to maintain its network. An assistant helps Deane keep things organized. And that's about it.

The company's profile in the Reno area may get a wee bit higher, Deane says, as it looks to beef up its research staff, an organization that likely would work best in a single location rather than scattered in individual offices around the world.

The company traces its roots to a completely random assignment names were literally drawn from a hat delivered to Deane shortly after his arrival at a Milwaukee-area bank in the early 1970s.

The freshly minted MBA graduate was told to study the possibilities in the then-new equipment leasing and finance business.

Liking Deane's report, the bank got into the business.

"It was a fresh field, very rapidly growing, very entrepreneurial," Deane says.

When his mentor at the bank, George Aker, came to Reno as president of Nevada National Bank, Deane followed. He later became president of the bank himself.

Finding himself unhappy at a Midwest bank a few years later and looking for a way to return to the lifestyle he enjoyed in northern Nevada, Deane and three other specialists in equipment finance launched the consultancy in 1991.

Their first contract: Boeing, which hired them to analyze retention of the aircraft maker's captive finance unit.

More big-name contracts followed, including work with Dell Computer. Recent work by the company has included a contract to help a major IT company establish a customer-finance unit in Brazil and a contract to identify issues that kept a division of a publicly held equipment leasing company from consistent profitability.

The company has been busy, too, helping its clients understand new rules on leasing proposed by both the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board.

The Alta Group is growing its ranks of consultants quickly, nearly doubling from the cadre of 44 who worked with the firm a year ago. And it's added six since the start of this year alone.

The sales effort that keeps those experts busy is distinctly low-key sponsorship of an annual conference on equipment leasing, participation in industry groups, occasional press releases and advertising in publications that target the leasing business.

But when they're done well, those low-key sales pitches can be highly effective.

Deane says a research paper developed by the company for the Equipment Leasing and Finance Foundation in 2002, for example, has been downloaded more than a half million times in nine years.