Because it’s Friday. In August. Although we’d be more curious to know what went into the Kool-Aid.™
Buckets. Of. Frosting.
Earlier:
McGladrey’s Giant Putting Green Cake Will Ensure That Everyone Gets to Celebrate Their Rebranding
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The Purpose of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ New HR Service in India Isn’t Entirely Clear
PwC has launched a new HR service in India and one can only speculate as to the inspiration behind staging the move there (I’ll give you a hint: it starts with Satyam and ends in fraud) but let’s take a look at the official spiel before we rush to judgment.
India’s Financial Express:
Global audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, announced the launch of its human resources service ‘Saratoga’ in India along with India Human Capital Effectiveness survey (HCE), a top company official said.
“Saratoga is the most extensive database of HR metrics available globally. We are launching it in India and we have already got an immense response from Indian companies,” PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Partner and Global HRM network leader, Richard Phelps, told PTI here.
On the surface, Saratoga looks like little more than an inventory count of companies’ human capital, which means something when you have to keep a leash on a bunch of customer service guys with fake first names (how else would you keep track of them?).
See, PwC cares. They care that JP Morgan outsources call center jobs to India – I know this because I’m a Chase customer (leave me alone) and have had the misfortune of dialing in. Meanwhile, JPM’s off-shore hiring spree continues and someone’s got to handle all that “human capital”, why not PwC?
I don’t care that some guy in India has a job, I care that he calls himself Patrick and pretends to have a bizarre hybrid Texas/New Jersey accent. Is there going to be a check box on these PwC Saratoga metrics for guys who fake 50s-style American first names from Indian call centers?
I’m not bitter. It’s good that PwC cares about the global community and wants to reach out to facilitate cheap labor for its audit clients like JP Morgan (for the record I use BofA too and they have the decency to hire air-headed middle-state chicks named Kelly and Sarah).
Could you imagine what would happen if the Fed stepped in and barred PwC from auditing anything that’s moving here in the US? Hell, it happened in India.
Good luck with that human capital census or, uh, whatever it is, PwC. I mean that.
Most Top Ten Accounting Firms Saw Lower Revenues, Headcount for 2009
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]