Alan Ball Ltd (ABL) is a large global management and development consultancy. The ABL Group was formed in 1970 when two consultancy businesses merged. A consultancy contains experts who provide advisory services in a variety of fields. The quality of its people is vital for success. The business has grown both organically, by recruiting more staff in different fields, and by merger and acquisition, that is, taking over existing businesses in markets important to ABL's development strategy. For example, in 2007 ABL bought an educational consultancy in Brazil and an environmental firm in France. To ensure further growth, ABL has also formed a strategic alliance with a construction consulting company in Canada to help strengthen its core market sectors and to grow in that country Today ABL’s business spans 50 countries and employs more than 15,000 staff. Its experts work on thousands of projects across the world in many areas. These include procurement, transport, finance, buildings, the environment, health, education and communications. Every project requires a different set of skills from ABL’s experts. Its projects address the challenges of environmental issues; such as flood protection or management of waste. It plans, manages and delivers projects to help its customers find more sustainable solutions. ABL is now looking at a new project in Japan to build what will be the world’s largest statue, over twice the size of the Statue of Liberty. They have little actual project construction experience at this level and will need to investigate how such a project can be funded before they commit themselves. At any one time ABL works on hundreds of complex projects around the world.

Question: You have been tasked by the Board of Directors of ABL to present a paper to the Board evaluating the strategic options that ABL have used to achieve growth.