Auditing companies of the Big Four: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG. Audit and consulting services

Why are the auditing companies of the Big Four known all over the world? What are they? We will answer these questions in detail in the article. The Big Four are four companies that provide audit and consulting services. They are considered to be the largest in the world and have the following names:

• KPMG;
• Ernst & Young
• Deloitte;
• PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Below is the revenue of the "Big Four", according to the latest information, and the number of staff:

Company	Revenues	Number of employees	Revenues per employee	Year
KPMG	24.4 billion dollars.	173,965	$ 140,488	2015
Deloitte	$ 35.2 billion	225,400	$ 156,167	2015
PricewaterhouseCoopers	$ 35.4 billion	208 100	$ 169,892	2015
Ernst & Young	28.7 billion dollars.	212,000	$ 135,517	2015

Transformations

How did the auditing companies of the Big Four appear? The largest enterprises were once eight, and they were collectively called the "Big Eight". The merger of Touche Ross and Deloitte, Sells and Haskins occurred in 1989 (the merged firm was named Deloitte & Touche). Arthur Young and Ernst & Whinney (new name - Ernst & Young) joined together. As a result, the "Eight" was transformed into the "Six". The number of huge firms fell again after the merger of Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse in 1998 (PricewaterhouseCoopers). Finally, "Five" was transformed into the "Four" after the collapse of customers from Arthur Andersen and the subsequent liquidation of the company in 2002.

International Network

And now consider the auditing companies of the Big Four. PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international network of companies offering professional services in the field of consulting and audit. It consists of companies that are part of the global network of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited, each of which is a legally independent entity. This organization is a member of the "Big Four" audit firms and has existed for more than 160 years. The headquarters of the network is located in London.

History of PwC

Are you interested in knowing what the Big Four auditing companies are doing? So, PwC was established in London in 1849, and in 1998, as a result of the merger of Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse, the company received its present name.

In 2011, in April, the PricewaterhouseCoopers authorities acknowledged the company's fault in conducting a halt audit of the Indian corporation Satyam Computer Services (the specialists did not find a fraudulent scheme by which the company's management caused enormous damage to the owner). PwC agreed to pay a $ 7.5 million fine to US regulators and $ 18 million to indemnify the owner of the Indian company.

Management and owners of PwC

In America, PwC appears as a partnership with limited responsibilities and is the third largest private company in the country in terms of revenue. Its main manager is Moritz Robert.

Corporate culture PwC

The company PricewaterhouseCoopers is included in the rating of 100 outstanding employers of America, which annually prints Fortune. In the 2013 ranking, she won 81st place.

Programs of patronage function in this organization. So, in the framework of a project involving partners, the partners, starting with the main ones, become mentors of the company's fifteen employees. They establish personal and professional contacts, get acquainted with families, find out what they want and what they are interested in. Once a quarter, wards meet with their bosses to discuss their weaknesses and strengths, ways of correcting the former and strengthening the latter.

PwC Activities

770 PwC offices are located in 158 countries. Its clients in 2006 were 425 enterprises from the global rating of FT Global 500 companies.

More than 168 thousand specialists work in PwC. The revenue of this enterprise was $ 29.2 billion in 2011.

PwC in the Russian Federation

PwC in Russia for the first time began its activities in 1913. The Moscow office of this company is located on Butyrsky Val. She also has offices in Kazan, Ekaterinburg, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Vladikavkaz, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don. Togliatti office due to lack of clients in the region was closed in 2009. As of 2009, there were approximately 2,300 employees in the Russian branches of PwC.

This organization, together with the International Finance Faculty of the Finacademy, in 2009 launched the Master's project "World Capitals", in which the disciplines studying income were taught in English.

PwC won in 2012 the first place in the ranking of the largest consulting and audit companies, then displacing KPMG, but from 2013 again moved to the second position.

The managing partner of this enterprise in Russia is Igor Lotakov.

Deloitte

What is Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited? This is a worldwide network of enterprises that provide support in the field of consulting and auditing. She is a member of the Big Four. This is the largest network in terms of the number of employees (244,400 specialists).

The Chronicle of Deloitte

The first office of Deloitte Touche was created by Deloitte William Welch in London in 1849. In 1990, Tush George and his partner registered the firm Touche, Niven & Co. in New York. In Tokyo, in 1968, the accounting company Tohmatsu Awoki & Co. began its work. The organization Deloitte & Touche appeared in 1990 as a result of integration, and in 1993 the company received its current name.

Global structure of Deloitte

What is good about Deloitte? Her every representative office is a legally independent and separate person and is subject to the laws of the country in which she works.

For many years, the Deloitte multinational network of enterprises was a Swiss association, but in 2010, on July 31, members of this organization joined the private firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, with the responsibility of the participants in the borders they established, established in England.

In this structure, the cooperative provides support only to its member enterprises. It is similar to other worldwide networks that provide high-quality services. In their turn, the participating firms provide assistance to the end user. The management tries to limit the responsibility of each individual member. The general director of this company is Renzhen Punet.

Activities of Deloitte

Deloitte provides assistance in the areas of consulting, taxation, auditing and corporate finance to private and public enterprises operating in various economic sectors.

By the end of 2015, Deloitte has operated in more than 150 countries. Its firm-shareholders in 2015 reported a total record revenue of $ 35.2 billion.

Deloitte in the CIS countries

Deloitte opened its first residence in Moscow in 1990. It is one of the first among the famous consulting and auditing companies to appear on the CIS market.

In Russia this company is represented in five large cities: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ufa, Yekaterinburg and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, where about 2,000 specialists work.

In Russia, Deloitte is part of Deloitte CIS Holdings Limited, which is part of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a multinational group of Deloitte firms.

The offices of the organization are open in 11 CIS countries, as well as Ukraine and Georgia. They employ more than 2,500 employees. This company provides the following services:

• Corporate finance;
• Taxation and law;
• consulting services.

Ernst Young

Have you ever heard about Ernst Young? This is a British consulting and audit company, one of the largest in the world (it is included in the "Big Four" of audit firms). Under the brand EY, which is the abbreviation of the company's name, it is effective from 2013 onwards. Its headquarters are located in London.

History of Ernst Young

Ernst Young was founded in 1989 through the integration of US auditing companies: Ernst & Whinney, created by Ernst Alvin in 1903, and AC Young, formed by Yang Arthur in 1906.

EY is a British audit and consulting company that provided assistance to Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt in September 2008. This collapse marked the transition of the global economic crisis of the late 2000s into an intensive phase. Then Ernst & Young said that Lehman was ruined in connection with a series of negative unprecedented events in the financial markets, and management is responsible for the credit debt of the bank, not the auditor.

Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of EY is Mark Weinberger. Her main office is in Sydney, Australia. In general, this company opened 728 offices in 150 countries, employing more than 230,000 specialists.

In Russia, the company owns offices located in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Krasnodar, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Togliatti, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don and Vladivostok.

Activities of Ernst Young

In the annual list of "Selective places where it's worth starting a career", BusinessWeek's magazine was given the EY first place. And in the Fortune list "100 selected firms for work" in 2009, this organization took 44th place and the highest one among the Big Four.

The University of Great Place to Work (USA) in 2012 included EY in the list of the most outstanding employers among multinational enterprises. It is known that this inventory is already the second year. It includes 25 world leading companies in this field.

EY in 2013 was recognized as the best employer among the firms providing qualified services, and won the second place in the international rating Universum 50 World's Most Attractive Employers.

In 2015, she was also rated as the most optimal employer among the firms providing professional assistance, and she was on the eighth place in the rating of the Russian Federation Universum 50 World's Most Attractive Employers.

KPMG

What is KPMG famous for? This is one of the largest networks in the world providing qualification support. She is in the Big Four. Its international headquarters is located in the Netherlands (Amstelveen).

The company employs more than 162,000 employees. KPMG provides three types of services: tax, audit and consulting (restructuring with business management, management and risk explanations).

History of KPMG

KPMG was established in 1870, when Pete William Barkley registered an accounting company in London. In 1911, Willari Barclay Peat & Co merged into one with Marwick Mitchell & Co in Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co, later known as Peat Marwick.

At the same time in Glasgow in 1877 the office of the accounting firm Thomson McLintock was established. Kleinveld Pete in 1917 opened an accounting company in Amsterdam. A little later he entered into an alliance with Klynveld Kraayenhof & Co with Krajenhof. In 1979, Deutsche Treuhandgesellschaft (Germany), Klynveld Kraayenhof & Co (The Netherlands) and McLintock Main Lafrentz (USA) created a union of national independent companies KMG to create a powerful international European company. Then in 1987, Peat Marwick and KMG completed the first major integration of accounting companies and created an organization called KPMG, with the exception of English - Peat Marwick McLintock.

Further KPMG underwent various changes, and in October 2007 its member firms from Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Liechtenstein were integrated into the partnership of KPMG Europe. Afterwards, member firms from Belgium, the CIS, Spain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Norway joined.

In December 2008 it became known that $ 2.37 billion from two funds of the Tremont group, which was a client of KPMG, were transferred to the "pyramid" of Madoff.

Structure of KPMG

KPMG audit is carried out at the highest level. It is in the rating of 100 elected employers of the United States, which annually prints Fortune. She took 63rd place in the rating of 2014, leaving behind all the other fours. Each international office of this company is an independent legal entity - a member of the cooperative KPMG International (a Swiss company registered in the canton of Zug).

In 2003, KPMG International transformed its legal structure from a Swiss company to a cooperative society under the laws of Switzerland.

Such a structure, in which the cooperative supports only its member firms, is similar to other networks that provide qualified assistance. Similarly, member firms provide services to the end user. The aim is to limit the duties of independent members.

Andrew Michael, the former Australian chairman of KPMG, took the post of interethnic chairman in 2011, in September. Today he works in Hong Kong. The world head of the accounting firm of the Big Four started for the first time in history in the Pacific-Asian region.

KPMG in the CIS

KPMG provides audit and consulting services in the CIS countries. It has its branches in Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Georgia. More than 3,800 employees work in its departments.

The company opened its office in Moscow, its regional centers are located in Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Perm, St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, Kazan, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod. The largest Russian organizations are its customers. In 2011 fiscal year, KPMG's revenue in Russia amounted to 10.5 billion rubles.

The establishment of the "Expert RA" established that the audit business of KPMG is the largest in Russia since 2009. In 2011, KPMG was the largest consulting and audit firm in this country, but in the first place with the same result in the next year was PwC.

Expertise

"Big Four" audit conducts a magnificent. But what is it? An audit is the branch of economic activity and the academic discipline studied in institutions. According to the legislation of the Russian Federation, the audit is understood only as operations to verify financial (accounting) reports and accounting data, as well as to display an independent, reasoned opinion of the auditor on the authenticity of the statements in the form of a written opinion of the expert.

In essence and in accordance with the traditions of business vocabulary and turnover, audit is the procedure for evaluating and independently verifying accounting data, assessing the reporting and activities of the enterprise, as well as the process, system, product or project. Most often this term is applied to the audit of accounting statements of firms with the purpose of expressing opinions on their reliability.

In business practice, the concepts of "technical audit", "operational", "quality", "environmental" and other variations of the audit are used. However, these processes and concepts do not have the wording stated in the law (legal). Some types of expertise are close by certification and significance. It is necessary to distinguish these types of audit, inspection and control activities from the audit of financial reports.

Counseling

Now let's find out what consulting is. This is work related to advising managers, managers on issues related to technological, commercial, expert, financial, legal, technical activities. The purpose of this discipline is to help management (management system) in achieving the objectives.

Consulting enterprises are typified by separate areas of practice (for example, personnel, financial, strategic, organizational).

Consulting is designed to analyze and substantiate the prospects for the application and development of scientific, technical and economic-organizational solutions, taking into account the problems of the client and the subject area.

Counseling is necessary in the following cases:

• The firm needs new ideas.
• The firm needs knowledge and experience.
• The management of the enterprise lacks agreement on an important issue, and to receive an objective recommendation, an external opinion is required.
• The firm needs support to complete a project.
• Because of the shortcomings of the company's internal corporate dialogue, a professional is needed, capable of becoming a link between units and levels.