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TOP 5 CONSULTING COMPANIES |
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Deloitte: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, also branded as Deloitte, is the largest professional services company in the world. Since 2010 Deloitte has had approximately 170,000 staff at work in over 150 countries, delivering audit, tax, consulting, enterprise risk, and financial advisory services through its member firms. Its international headquarters is located in Paramount Plaza, Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
In 1845 William Welch Deloitte opened an office in Basinghall Street in London. He was the first individual to be appointed independent auditor of a public company. Deloitte went on to open an office in New York in 1880.
In 1895 Charles Waldo Haskins and Eijah Watt Sells formed Haskins & Sells in New York.
In 1898 George Touche established an office in London, and in 1900 he joined John Ballantine Niven to found the company of Touche Niven in the Johnston Building at 30 Broad Street in New York. At the time, the introduction of income taxes was soon to generate enormous demand for accounting professionals.
On April 1, 1933, Colonel Arthur Hazelton Carter, president of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, and managing partner of Haskins & Sells, testified before the US Senate committee on banking and currency. Carter helped convince Congress that independent audits should be mandatory for public companies.
In 1947, Detroit accountant George Bailey, then president of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, launched his own organization. The new entity enjoyed such a rewarding start that in less than a year, the partners merged with Touche Niven and A.R. Smart to form Touche, Niven, Bailey & Smart. Headed by Bailey, the organization thrived, in part by creating a dedicated management-consulting section. It also forged closer links with operations established by the co-founder of Touche Niven, George Touche: the Canadian firm, Ross, and the British firm, George A. Touche. In 1960, the firm was renamed Touche, Ross, Bailey & Smart and became Touche Ross in 1969.
In 1989, in most countries, Deloitte, Haskins & Sells merged with Touche Ross to form Deloitte & Touche; however, in the United Kingdom the local firm of Deloitte, Haskins & Sells merged with Coopers & Lybrand (today PricewaterhouseCoopers) instead. For some years after the merger, the merged UK firm was called Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte and the local firm of Touche Ross retained its original name. In the mid-1990s, however, both UK firms changed their names to correspond with those of their respective international organizations.
While the full name of the UK private company is Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, in 1989 it initially branded itself DRT International. In 2003 the re-branding campaign was commissioned by Bill Parrett, then CEO of DTT, and led by Jerry Leamon, the global clients and markets leader. The name Deloitte now refers to the brand under which independent firms throughout the world collaborate to provide auditing, consulting, financial advisory, risk management, and tax services to selected clients.
In 2008, Deloitte adopted its new Always One Step Ahead (AOSA) brand positioning platform to reinforce the existing Deloitte vision: “To be the Standard of Excellence.”
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PricewaterhouseCoopers: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is a professional services firm based in London and operating worldwide. It is the world's second largest professional services firm (after Deloitte) and one of the so-called Big Four global professional services firms.
With offices in 757 cities across 151 countries and employing over 163,000 people, in 2009 the firm had total revenues of US$26 billion; of which US$13 billion was generated by its assurance services, US$7 billion by its tax services, and US$6 billion by its advisory services.
The firm was formed in 1998 through a merger between Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. The trading name was shortened to PwC in September 2010 as part of a major re-branding exercise.
Samuel Lowell Price, an accountant, opened an office in London in 1849. In 1865 Price went into partnership with William Hopkins Holyland and Edwin Waterhouse. Holyland left shortly after to work in accountancy on his own, and the firm was known from 1874 as Price, Waterhouse & Co. The original partnership agreement, signed by Price, Holyland, and Waterhouse, is kept in Southwark Towers, one of PwC's chief legacy offices in London.
By the late 19th century Price Waterhouse had gained considerable respect as an accounting firm. In response to trade between the United Kingdom and the USA Price Waterhouse opened an office in New York in 1890, and the American firm itself soon expanded rapidly. The original British firm opened an office in Liverpool in 1904 and then elsewhere in the United Kingdom and countries abroad, each time establishing a separate partnership in each country: the worldwide practice of Price Waterhouse was, therefore, an organization of collaborating firms that had grown individually rather than being the result of an international merger.
In 1854 William Cooper established his accounting practice in London, which became Cooper Brothers seven years later when his three brothers joined. In the USA in 1898, Robert H. Montgomery, William M. Lybrand, Adam A. Ross Jr and his brother T. Edward Ross formed Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery. Coopers & Lybrand was the result of a merger in 1957 between Cooper Brothers & Co; Lybrand; Ross Bros & Montgomery; and a Canadian firm, McDonald, Currie & Co. In 1990, in several countries including the United Kingdom, Coopers & Lybrand merged with Deloitte Haskins & Sells to become Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte, renamed Coopers & Lybrand in 1992.
In 1998, Price Waterhouse merged with Coopers & Lybrand to form PricewaterhouseCoopers in an attempt to achieve a scale that would raise the new firm to a different class. The firm had created a large professional consulting branch, as had other major accountancy firms, generating much of its fees. Management consulting services (MCS) were the fastest growing and often most profitable area of the practice. However, PwC was coming under increasing pressure to avoid conflicts of interest by not providing consulting services to its audit clients. Since it audited a significant proportion of the world’s largest companies, this was beginning to restrict its potential market; and such conflicts could only increase when additional services, such as outsourcing, were offered. In May 2002 PwC announced that its consulting activities would be spun off as an independent entity. |
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TOP 3 |
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Ernst & Young: Ernst & Young (EY) is one of the largest professional services firms in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). It is a worldwide organization of member firms operating in over 140 countries. Its international headquarters are in London, and the US headquarters are located at 5 Times Square in New York.
Ernst & Young emerged from a series of mergers among earlier organizations. The oldest originating partnership was founded in England as Harding & Pullein in 1849. Later that year Frederick Whinney joined the firm. He was made a partner in 1859, and when his sons joined the business it was renamed Whinney Smith & Whinney in 1894.
In 1903, the firm of Ernst & Ernst was established in Cleveland by Alwin C. Ernst and his brother Theodore, and in 1906 Arthur Young & Co was set up by the Scotsman Arthur Young in Chicago. As early as 1924, these American firms allied with prominent British firms: Young with Broads Paterson & Co, and Ernst with Whinney Smith & Whinney. In 1979 this led to the formation of Anglo-American Ernst & Whinney, creating the fourth largest accountancy firm in the world. Also in 1979, the European offices of Arthur Young merged with several large local European firms, which became member firms of Arthur Young International.
In 1989, the world’s fourth largest firm Ernst & Whinney merged with the fifth largest, Arthur Young, on a global basis to create Ernst & Young. EY built up its consultancy segment heavily during the 1980s and 1990s. The US Securities and Exchange Commission and members of the investment community began to raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest between the consulting and auditing work within the Big Five, and in May 2000, EY was the first of those firms to formally and fully detach its consulting practices via a sale to the French IT services company Cap Gemini for US$11 billion, largely in stock; thus creating the new company of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, which was later renamed Capgemini. In 2002, EY merged with many former Arthur Andersen practices around the world, although not those in China, the Netherlands, or the United Kingdom. |
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KPMG: KPMG is one of the largest professional services firms in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Its international headquarters are located in Amstelveen, the Netherlands. The firm employs about 140,000 people and has three lines of services: audit, tax, and advisory. The history of KPMG dates back to 1870 when William Barclay Peat formed an accounting firm in London. In 1877 accountancy firm Thomson McLintock opened an office in Glasgow, and in 1911 William Barclay Peat & Co and Marwick Mitchell & Co merged to form Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co, later known as Peat Marwick. Meanwhile in 1917 Piet Klijnveld opened his accounting firm in Amsterdam. He later merged it with Kraayenhof to form Klynveld Kraayenhof & Co.
In 1979 Klynveld Kraayenhof & Co (Netherlands), Thomson McLintock (USA) and Deutsche Treuhandgesellschaft (Germany) formed KMG (Klynveld Main Goerdeler) as a group of independent national practices to establish a strong European-based international firm. Then in 1987 KMG and Peat Marwick joined forces in the first mega-merger of large accounting firms and formed a firm called KPMG in the USA and most of the rest of the world, and Peat Marwick McLintock in the United Kingdom. In 1990 the two firms settled on the joint name of KPMG Peat Marwick McLintock, but in 1991 the firm was renamed KPMG Peat Marwick; in 1999 the name was further shortened to KPMG.
In 2001 KPMG divested itself of its US consulting firm through an initial public offering of KPMG Consulting, Inc, which is now called BearingPoint, Inc. In early 2009 BearingPoint filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and proceeded to sell portions of the firm to Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and other parties. |
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TOP 5 |
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Grant Thornton: Grant Thornton International is a global organization of accounting and consulting member firms that provide assurance, tax, and specialist advisory services to privately held businesses, public-interest entities, and public-sector bodies. It has its headquarters in London. Grant Thornton International Ltd is a not-for-profit, non-practicing, international umbrella membership entity organized as a private company limited by guarantee. It is incorporated in London, United Kingdom, and has no share capital.
Member firms within the global organization operate in over 100 countries. Fee income of the member firms rose by 14 % in 2008 to US$4 billion. There are over 2,600 partners and a total staff of over 30,000, including partners. Although many of the firms now bear the Grant Thornton name, they are not all members of one international partnership. Each member firm is a separate national entity, governing itself and managing its administrative matters independently on a local basis. |
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