Partners at the accountancy and consulting firm PwC will be paid an average of £765,000 this year after profits soared to more than £1bn, partly due to increased demand for advice on how to handle the Brexit crisis.
A total of 913 partners at the firm, which used to be called PricewaterhouseCoopers, are to collect an average of £765,000 – the accountants’ biggest annual payday in a decade, and 7.4% more than they got in 2018.
The bumper pay at PwC follows that of its rival Deloitte, which last month reported that it had paid its partners an average of £882,000. The huge payouts are likely to increase political pressure for a breakup of the so-called big four accountancy firms, which have been repeatedly criticised over lax auditing of companies, anticompetitive practices and conflicts of interest.
The competition watchdog has proposed a radical overhaul of the audit market which would force the big four – which also include EY and KPMG – to split their audit and consulting businesses, with different bosses, management teams, accounts and pay policies.
PwC was criticised by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) regulator in July for an “unsatisfactory” deterioration in inspection results for its audits of FTSE 350 clients. Earlier in the year MPs criticised PwC for “milking the cash cow dry” for charging £44m for a year’s work as special project managers on the administration of the collapsed construction company Carillion.
The firm’s chairman, Kevin Ellis, said he was “disappointed that this year’s FRC audit quality inspection results were below the high standards we are committed to achieving on all of our audits”, and the company was “committed to playing our part in building trust and confidence in the sector”.
Ellis will collect the biggest single pay deal of £3.7m, up 8.9% on his 2018 pay. The 12 people serving on the firm’s management board will be paid an average of £1.98m. Two-thirds of the management board are men, and just 21% of partners are female.
PwC runs a unit advising other companies on how to close their gender pay gap, and recently published a report criticising UK firms for “sluggish at best” progress in closing the gap.
A spokeswoman for PwC was unable to provide details of the lowest paid member of staff, or provide the ratio between the highest and lowest paid employee. But they said the average partner was paid 13 times more than the average salaried employee.
PwC’s revenue increased by 12% to £4.2bn in the year to the end of June, with income from consultancy work jumping by 22%. A considerable amount of consultancy work is thought to be related to concerns about Brexit. A spokeswoman said Brexit was a factor in the increased work alongside demands from companies to grapple with the new technology revolution, but the firm did not keep a tally of Brexit-related work. The company collected £400m from the UK government for public sector projects.
