The average age of partners at UK firms has risen significantly from 2006 to 2007, a shift that ACCA described this week as possibly resulting from new age discrimination rules.

On the most comprehensive basis, partners are on average half a year older than they were before. Taking just the average age of partners at all 50 firms, and then dividing by the number of firms who submitted figures, you get an average age of 41 in 2006, and 47.6 in 2007.

Of course, such an analysis does not do justice to the fact that there are far more partners at PwC (793) than there are at Cooper Parry, for instance (21).

We also multiplied the average age of partners in each firm by the number of partners at the firm, to give a total combined age of all partners in each firm. Add them up across the UK, and then divide that by the number of partners in total in accountancy firms, and the trend is still clear, if much more muted.

In 2006, the average age of a partner at a UK firm was 45.9. This year it is 46.6. Is such a shift significant?

There are several other points that are also notable. For the three of the Big Four for which we have numbers for both years (PwC, Deloitte and E&Y), the number of partners under 40 has declined from 305 in 2006 to 273 in 2007. The numbers could indicate succession problems in the future.

Industry consultant Phil Shohet says he believes the reason could be the influx of partners who are older, as opposed to the profession taking in partners in their lower thirties.

‘This ultimately leads to a succession problem because of our ageing population. We have fewer qualified people coming into the profession. And even if they are qualified, they want to leave because of intense risk and heavily regulated environment associated with the profession. The rewards to the profession are not what they used to be.

‘People prefer to go to banks, or other corporate positions. The result is that this drives up the number of mergers, especially as partners retire without having suitable candidates to replace them,’ Shohet says.

Mergers in the mid-tier sector particularly have become prolific in the last year. Grant Thornton threatened it would edge closer to the Big Four as it swooped in on Robson Rhodes, following the Mazars/ MRI Moores Rowland merger last month and KPMG which merged with its German counterpart.

Shohet is of the opinion that the final outcome may not be the best for clients, who may be left with far too few firms to choose from. ‘I think in the next three to five years, we may be left with considerably fewer firms, which means less choice,’ he says. ‘Firms have to become more efficient, offer more rounded work to clients as opposed to just compliance work to cover their backs. We’ve seen a lot of knee jerk reaction to the corporate failures. We’ve got to reverse the trend otherwise we will be in a crisis,’ Shohet says.