PwC UK has announced the promotion of 54 equity partners, effective 1 July 2018.
The firm said that the new partners “represent a diverse range of backgrounds, with more people who didn’t attend university, who work on a part-time basis, and are from an ethnically-diverse background moving into senior positions”.
Of the newly promoted partners, 26% are female – an increase on 19% appointed in 2017. PwC said that it had a “strong pipeline” of women coming through into senior roles with 40% of newly promoted director being female. In addition, 17% of the new partners are black, asian and minority ethnic.
Laura Hinton, chief people officer at PwC, said: “In a fast changing tech-enabled world, innovation is a key attribute for any successful and sustainable organisation. As innovation increases with diversity, it’s positive to see a more diverse group of partners coming through. The fact that we have new partners who work part-time and didn’t go to university demonstrates our commitment to making PwC a place where anyone can succeed and hopefully provide inspiring role models for the next generation.
“While it’s encouraging to see that 26% of our new partners are female and 17% are BAME, progress is slower than we would like to shift the overall diversity of our partnership. That’s why we’ve set a clear 5-point action plan to accelerate our aim of achieving our gender and ethnicity targets. The plan includes changing our recruitment processes, how we allocate ‘career-defining’ roles and increasing leadership accountability for reaching our diversity targets.”
The Big Four firm said that the new intake reflects PwC’s commitment to regions outside of London with 30% of the new partners based outside of the capital. It also said that the appointments demonstrate the firm’s investment in strategic growth areas and increasing demand for advice in technology, cybersecurity, private business, and data and analytics.
Chairman and senior partner at PwC Kevin Ellis said: “In order to help our clients solve their biggest problems we need people with a broad range of skills, backgrounds and experiences. That’s exactly what our new partners represent. Our investment in new partners this year reflects the increasing demand from our clients for technology expertise, and for people with diverse thinking and industry experience.”
PwC has recently been at the centre of a furore over audit work for BHS in which chairman Ellis called partner Steve Denison’s work “inadequate”. The firm has been fined a record £10m over the audit.