When it comes to handling money, Pricewaterhouse Coopers is about as big as it gets in the London financial scene. and came about in 1998 with a merger of Coopers and Lybrand with Price Waterhouse, both London City firms dating back to the 19th century. Originally both accountancy firms, by the late 20th century they had mutated into a global accountancy/business management/consultancy firm, with their merger an attempt to keep pace with the other giants of the industry, such as Arthur Andersen. Worldwide revenues topped $25bn in 2007, with customers including four of the US’s ten biggest public companies, Ford Motors, ChevronTexaco, IBM and Exxon Mobil, and four of the largest in the UK – Lloyds TSB, Barclays, Royal Dutch Shell and GlaxoSmithKline. Pricewaterhouse Coopes audits 40 per cent of the companies in the FTSE 100 index (at a recent count) and 45 per cent of the Fortune 1000.
A common criticism of consultants is a variation of the ‘those who can do, those who can’t teach’ maxim. That those who can do business are in business … not studying for MBAs and then working as consultants. However, they’re obviously reasonably on the money Pricewaterhouse Coopers employees have moved freely to and from major positions in public and private companies. Alumni include James M Schneider, CFO of Dell, Frederick Henderson who is CFO of General Motors, and Peter Smith who chairs Savills estate agents. They are, perhaps unsurprisingly, lighter on entrepreneurs, though Min Zhu, founder of WebEx, is on the list.
For more see the PwC corporate website.
