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Here’s How Much Deloitte Spends on Compensation As a Percentage of the Firm’s Revenue

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez
two hands holding a 2 dollar bill

Shout-out Stephen Foley at FT for writing up the most important part of Deloitte’s recently released transparency report: PAY. Let’s jump right in and do our own digging.

The 2023 Transparency Report talks quite a bit about governance, ethics, audit quality, leadership, blah blah.

screenshot of the 2023 Deloitte US Transparency Report table of contents

You’re welcome to check it out should any of these appeal to you, just know each section is littered with Deloitte’s trademark self-fellating language. We’re here for page 14 (16 in the PDF) and the part FT highlighted in their article this morning. This:

screenshot from Deloitte US 2023 Transparency Report

Since 2021, employee comp and benefits as a percentage of revenue climbed from 52.4 percent to 55.4 percent, the highest it’s been since the firm started sharing the number a few years back. Deloitte US revenue climbed during that period as well — $22.9 billion for 2021, $27.9 billion for 2022, and $32.7 billion for 2023 (source) — so that means employee compensation as a percentage of revenue was $12 billion in 2021, $15.3 billion in 2022, and $18.1 billion in 2023 (numbers are sloppily rounded, accountants are encouraged to check my math). Going a little further back, comp and benefits as a percentage of revenue was 46.2 percent in 2015, 47.9 percent in 2016, 49.1 percent in both 2017 and 2018, and 49.2 percent in 2019. It wasn’t until 2020 the firm hit more than half its revenue (51.2 percent) on employee comp and benefits. According to the non-GAAP financial information they’ve shared, that is.

As for the rest of the report, there’s a bit of lip service paid to attraction and retention, professional development, and performance management. None of it is particularly intriguing though. Again, you can read it yourself to make your own determination.

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It’s Ridiculous to Think That Enterprise Financial Dismissed KPMG Because of the Restatements

KPMG has been kicked to the curb by Enterprise Financial according to an 8-K that was filed on Friday by the company. The ubiquitous claim of “no disagreements with [insert firm]” was there along with a mention of a material weakness that was related to the restatements issued for both 2008 and 2007 but that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the dismissal of the auditors:

In connection with the identification of the loan participation accounting error described in Item 7, Management Discussion & Analysis and in Item 8, Note 2 of the consolidated financial statements and elsewhere in the Form 10K dated March 16, 2010, the Company also determined that a material weakness in its internal controls over financial reporting existed during the periods affected by the error, including as of December 31, 2008. The Company’s management concluded that the material weakness was the Company’s lack of a formal process to periodically review existing contracts and agreements with continuing accounting significance. To remediate this material weakness, during the fourth quarter of 2009 the Company implemented a formal process to review all contracts and agreements with continuing accounting significance on an annual basis. As a result of the review conducted in the fourth quarter, management did not identify any other errors in its previous accounting for such contracts or agreements. Management believes that this new process has remediated the material weakness in the Company’s internal control over financial reporting.

So in other words, “Yeah, maybe we should have been looking at these contracts but we weren’t and so some material misstatements slid through. We’ve slapped some duct tape on it and it’ll be fine from here on it. End of story.”

The esteemed pleasure of auditing Enterprise now belongs to Deloitte who has now snagged three clients from KPMG this year (by our count) – picking up Jefferies and Select Comfort back in March.

Enterprise Bank parent dismisses KPMG [St. Louis Business Journal]

Comp Watch ’11: Individual Results Coming in at Deloitte and More Details on Bonuses

Following up on our previous post that addressed the high level discussions at the firm, some people started getting calls on Friday and more are having meetings today:


Our first tipster was a recently promoted to Senior Associate in ERS Tech Risk in the Northeast:

Year end rating of 2, 18% [raise].

And the latest from Houston for an 5th year Senior Associate in audit:

Audit 4th year senior going into my 5th year from the Houston Office (Mid-America Region).

As a 1-rated senior my numbers were:

9.9% raise
10.4% AIP bonus

In addition, we received a couple of slides that could be of interest to you on the following two pages.

Here are details for “Rewards and Recognition” which spells out the awards in the program and last year’s stats:

Sixty-nine percent of SMs receiving a bonus seems impressive and the Outstanding Performance award could pay out nicely if you’re lucky enough to get one on the high end. The Service Anniversary award, on the other hand, is not impressive at all.


If this slide looks familiar, it’s because it is very similar to one we posted back in July that showed Deloitte’s efforts to revamp their comp structure. The previous slide showed the AIP pool for Senior Consultants while this one is for Senior Managers (although :

So share your details as they roll in and feel free to comment on the results, the slides and anything else that tickles your fancy (as it relates to Green Dot Comp).

6 thoughts on “Here’s How Much Deloitte Spends on Compensation As a Percentage of the Firm’s Revenue”

  1. Very interesting, audit and tax represent about 40% of revenue but bring in about 75% of the profit. Consulting on the other hand is a low margin (comparatively) business.

  2. Agree w first comment. You should do a follow up calc. Earnings as % revenue for each service line. Do the other B4 publish similar stats?

  3. I never believe any of the numbers these firms report. First of all, they’re unaudited, and I’ve been told many, many by these firms that financial statements are not reliable unless they’re audited. Second, they have incentive to manipulate the numbers to support their marketing efforts and dick measuring contests with the other firms. Third, I have heard from multiple very reliable sources that the internal accounting function at the large accounting firms are a hot mess. A source once told me that if the firms’ clients saw their internal accounting, the client would fire them. Finally, what non-public company voluntarily discloses its (accurate) financial results to the public? Would any reputable accountant or lawyer recommend that their non-public client do that? It’s insane.

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