BDO’s managing partner Simon Michaels is emphatic. Fee income might be down 5% and profits down too, but underlying performance has been “solid”.
“When you look across the international networks, and across domestic firms, that is a pretty solid performance. Our national turnover has seen a modest contraction over the past year but that is purely as a result of lower levels of transactional and other one-off assignments.”
Plus there’s this: “In the end the firm made 10% of partners redundant [i.e. laid off] and around 8% of the UK workforce.”
Still going with solid?