Deloitte Counters ConsultingTrend

Posted by accountingweb on Sep 19 2000 159 printer friendly

Big Five firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is to buck the trend for sell-offs by keeping its own consulting arm, the Financial Times reveals.

Deloitte chief executive Jim Copeland, who will be speaking at the SEC hearings this week, told the newspaper that there was no internal pressure to get rid of the consulting business - even after the high profile revelation of talks between Hewlett-Packard and the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Copeland appears to be hoping to ride out the possibility of a regulatory clampdown; the Securities and Exchange Commission is currently looking into how much freedom audit and consulting businesses should be allowed at the Big Five firms.

But with revenues of $5 billion last year, the Deloitte operation is to be kept in-house for the foreseeable future. The KPMG option - of floating its consulting division - has also been rejected by Copeland.

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