Taking Stock - Size isn't everything.
If you are a client of Deloitte & Touche and haven’t received a nice pressie from them yet, get on the blower to your contact partner immediately.
TS hears the firm was so pleased to have overtaken Ernst & Young to become the third largest of the Big Five, it decided to ship out a job lot of bubbly to its clients.
But the firm didn’t stop at that. Not ones to gloat normally, the troops at Stonecutter House very subtly sent over their fee income press release again, just after Ernst & Young had published its own set of results.
It didn’t take the combined brain power at TS to work out what they were doing. Yes guys, you are bigger than Ernst & Young now. Or are you? The point is, we are not comparing like with like any more. E&Y has successfully sold off its management consultancy, albeit at a time when it was under-performing. And they do not have an outsourcing arm to bolster the figures, though Deloitte’s CSL is due to be floated off some time in the spring.
The point is, the figures can be cut several different ways, and E&Y’s core business of assurance, tax and business advice is still bigger than Deloittes. Perhaps the best way to settle the matter would be for both parties to publish fully audited annual reports. Sorry, we forgot that E&Y already do.