Accounting Today put out their annual Top 100 Firms list late last week and while it focuses on the practices in United States it give us a little bit of room to speculate about who the real contenders are for the Global Six whathaveyou.
The ranking is based on net revenues from U.S. operations but it includes a lot data on each firm including # of offices, partners, total employees, and fee split.
Deloitte runs away with this list in three of the major categories – revenues, number of partners and total employees. The Casa de Salzberg had U.S. revenue of over $10.7 billion which was greater than #2 E&Y by over $3 billion.
Here are the top 10 firms along with their revenues, number of offices, number of partners and total employees
1. Deloitte – $10.7 billion; 102; 2,968; 42,367
2. Ernst & Young – $7.6 billion; 80; 2,500; 25,600
3. PricewaterhouseCoopers – $7.4 billion; 76; 2,235; 31,681
4. KPMG – $5 billion; 88; 1,847; 22,960
5. RSM McGladrey/McGladrey & Pullen – $1.5 billion; 93; 751; 7,755
6. Grant Thornton – $1.1 billion; 37; 535; 5,414
7. BDO – $620 million; 37; 273; 2,712
8. CBIZ/Mayer Hoffman McCann – $601 million; 180; 465; 4,580
9. Crowe Horwath – $508 million; 25; 240; 2,428
10. BKD – $393 million; 31; 258; 1,891
Some other interesting information from the list includes:
• Declining Revenues – Revenues for all firms dropped with the exception of CBIZ/Mayer Hoffman McCann, Crowe Horwath and BKD. KPMG had the largest drop of nearly 11%.
• Big 4 Dominate – The non-Big 4 firms’ combined revenue (approx. $4.7 billion) is still less than KPMG (smallest of the Big 4).
• Personnel Changes – E&Y had a percentage increase in partners of 8.7% while total employees dropped nearly 6%. CBIZ/MHM saw a 32% increase in partners while total employees decreased over 12%. Only PwC and Crowe Horwath saw net increases in the number of partners and total employees.
• Audit Heavy Firms – According to the list, PwC (52%), BDO (60%), Crowe Horwath (65%), and BKD (52%) all receive at least 50% of their revenues from audit fees.
So the whole Global Six thing, as much as we like to making a BFD out of it, is a non-issue. All the firms have global connections whether it’s through their own cooperative or through an international network so to cut it off at six seems a little clique-y. We’ll flip through the AT100 for any more interesting factoids but in the meantime feel to embellish any of the information presented here.
Top 100 Firms 2010 digital edition [Free registration for Digital Edition]
