Deloitte extends Big Four lead with $65bn in annual revenue

Deloitte increased its global revenue by 15 per cent in the past year, as new work advising companies on their environmental impact and auditing their ESG data helped offset a sharp slowdown in advice on mergers and acquisitions.

Figures released on Thursday showed the firm extending its lead as the largest of the Big Four professional services giants, with revenue of $64.9 billion (€60.6 billion) in the year to May 31st.

They also showed that a hiring boom across the sector has not entirely fizzled out, even as firms including Deloitte have laid off thousands of staff in underperforming parts of the business. Deloitte’s workforce increased 11 per cent over the 12 months, to 457,000 globally.

While tech consulting slowed from the heady pace in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, companies are still upgrading their IT and digital services, Deloitte said, and it has started selling AI and metaverse services as well. The firm’s largest business, consulting, continued to be its fastest growing, posting revenues up 19.1 per cent in local currency, to $29.6 billion.

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In other areas, too, the results showed the professional services firm’s ability to swap in new services for those that have slowed.

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Revenue growth in its audit and assurance business accelerated from the previous year to 13.8 per cent in local currency terms. Revenues reached $12.3 billion, driven by environmental, social and governance-related work such as preparing companies for new data reporting standards and auditing their ESG data. Its risk advisory business, which includes cybersecurity and climate change advice, grew 17.5 per cent to $7.8 billion.

Deloitte’s financial advisory practice increased revenues just 4.7 per cent in local currency terms to $5.1 billion, a sharp slowdown from more than 20 per cent the previous year. Corporate deal making has been in a slump this year, but the firm said restructuring work had taken up some of the slack, particularly thanks to the US and European banking industry turbulence of this spring.

Deloitte is the first of the Big Four to publish a full breakdown of its revenue growth for the 2023 fiscal year.

EY’s chief executive Carmine Di Sibio has previously disclosed that it expanded revenues by just over 14 per cent globally in its fiscal year, which ended on June 30th, to just under $50 billion. It is expected to publish fuller figures next week, with PwC following next month and KPMG later in the year.

As private partnerships, the firms do not have to report profit figures in most jurisdictions.

Revenue growth was strongest in the Americas, Deloitte said, at 17.5 per cent in local currency, followed by Europe, the Middle East and Africa at 12.6 per cent, with its Asia-Pacific region lagging.

Separately KPMG’s US partners have been told that they will be put on 50 per cent pay during six months of gardening leave if they quit to join a rival, marking an escalation in efforts by the Big Four accounting firms to stop staff poaching.

The move sets KPMG apart from Deloitte, PwC and EY and complicates the decision by partners to leave, since they may have to find money to cover the bills until they join the next firm, even if their new place of work agrees to make them whole later. The imposition of financial penalties for gardening leave – a required hiatus between jobs – has spread across the Big Four in the US in the past decade as competition for talent and clients has intensified, particularly on the consulting sides of their businesses. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023