Going Concern is often accused of sensationalizing in headlines and it’s a completely valid criticism because yeah, that makes for funny stuff (it’s really not that serious, you guys). Some of the time the criticism is valid. In the case of this article, we’ve simply reworked the headline from a story published today in The Telegraph.
No shit:
LOL at the “big four” finger quotes.
Just in case you didn’t get the gist of the article from the headline they go on to repeat it twice in the first three sentences:
KPMG’s partners took home a record £816,000 each ($1.01 million USD) last year after lay-offs helped make the accounting firm more profitable.
Top-ranking professionals working out of the company’s UK offices saw their average pay increase by 4pc, or £30,000, compared to 2023, KPMG said in its annual results.
The higher partner payouts came as the company, one of the “big four” accounting firms, posted an 11pc increase in profits for the year ending in September 2024 to $404m (£324m) after job cuts helped increase the accounting firm’s profitability.
Two Christmases ago KPMG made the decision to freeze pay and cut bonuses for 12,000 people at the firm. This on the back of the UK experiencing inflation as high as 11.1% the year prior but don’t worry, inflation was running under 5% in the months leading up to the pay freeze. The firm axed about 200 client-facing and back office roles in June.
2023’s take for KPMG UK partners was another record, £746,000 (approx. $928k USD), up four percent from the year prior.
The news of 2024 partner payouts was prompted by KPMG UK’s revenue announcement today: £2.99 billion ($3.7 billion USD) for the year ended September 30, 2024, a pre-tax increase of 11 percent over 2023.
“This is a good performance in challenging market conditions. Over the past 12 months our teams have worked incredibly hard to make sure our firm and our clients could adapt, succeed and grow in an uncertain business environment,” said Jon Holt, Group Chief Executive and UK Senior Partner.
“While we’ve focused on managing our costs, we have positioned the business for long-term sustainable growth. We continued to invest in AI and new technologies, audit quality and our communities, and merging with KPMG Switzerland [article] has opened up new markets and new client opportunities, to create more diverse and exciting career paths for our people.”
“We also invested in talent – bringing in around 1,000 new students and promoting 10% more of our people to put the right skills and pipeline in place, as well as increasing our bonus pot by 20%,” he added.
Whatever.
