Deloitte

Deloitte

Company type	UK private company, limited by guarantee
Industry	Professional services
Founded	London, United Kingdom (1845)
Headquarters	New York City, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	John P. Connolly (Chairman) Jim Quigley (CEO)
Services	Audit Consulting Financial advisory Tax
Revenue	US$26.6 billion (2010)
Number of employees	170,000 (August 2010)
Website	Deloitte.com/global

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (also branded as Deloitte) is the largest professional services organization in the world. According to the organization's website As of 2010, Deloitte has approximately 170,000 staff at work in 140 countries, delivering audit, tax, consulting, enterprise risk, and financial advisory services through its member firms.

Its global headquarters is located in Paramount Plaza, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York.

History

Early history

In 1845 William Welch Deloitte opened an office in Basinghall Street in London. Deloitte was the first person to be appointed an independent auditor of a public company. He went on to open an office in New York in 1880.

In 1895 Charles Waldo Haskins and Eijah Watt Sells formed Haskins & Sells in New York.

In 1898 George Touche established an office in London and then in 1900 joined John Ballantine Niven in establishing the firm of Touche Niven in the Johnston Building at 30 Broad Street in New York. At the time, there were fewer than 500 CPAs practicing in the United States, but the new era of income taxes was soon to generate enormous demand for accounting professionals.

On April 1, 1933, Colonel Arthur Hazelton Carter, President of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants and Managing Partner of Haskins & Sells, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking and Currency. Carter helped convince Congress that independent audits should be mandatory for public companies.

In 1947, Detroit accountant George Bailey, then president of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, launched his own organization. The new entity enjoyed such a positive start that in less than a year, the partners merged with Touche Niven and A.R. Smart to form Touche, Niven, Bailey & Smart. Headed by Bailey, the organization grew rapidly, in part by creating a dedicated management consulting function. It also forged closer links with organizations established by the co-founder of Touche Niven, George Touche: the Canadian organization Ross and the British organization George A. Touche. In 1960, the firm was renamed Touche, Ross, Bailey & Smart, becoming Touche Ross in 1969.

Mergers

In 1952 Deloitte merged with Haskins & Sells to form Deloitte, Haskins & Sells. In 1968 Nobuzo Tohmatsu formed Tohmatsu Awoki & Co, a firm based in Japan that was to become part of the Touche Ross network in 1975. In 1972 Robert Trueblood, Chairman of Touche Ross, led the committee responsible for recommending the establishment of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. He led the expansion of Touche Ross in that era.

In 1982, David Moxley and W. Grant Gregory became the leaders at Touche Ross. In 1985, Edward A. Kangas, a management consultant, was appointed managing partner of Touche Ross. In 1984, J. Michael Cook became managing partner of Deloitte, Haskins & Sells.

In 1989 Deloitte Haskins & Sells in the USA merged with Touche Ross in the USA to form Deloitte & Touche. The merged firm was led jointly by J. Michael Cook and Edward A. Kangas. Led by the UK partnership, a smaller number of Deloitte Haskins & Sells member firms rejected the merger with Touche Ross and shortly thereafter merged with Coopers & Lybrand to form Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte (later to merge with Price Waterhouse to become PwC). Some member firms of Touche Ross also rejected the merger with Deloitte Haskins & Sells and merged with other firms.

Recent history

Deloitte Office Building in Downtown Chicago

At the time of the US-led mergers to form Deloitte & Touche, the name of the international firm was a problem, because there was no worldwide exclusive access to the names "Deloitte" or "Touche Ross" - key member firms such as Deloitte in UK and Touche Ross in Australia had not joined the merger. The name DRT International was therefore chosen, referring to Deloitte, Ross and Tohmatsu. In 1993 the international firm was renamed Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu to reflect the contribution from the Japanese firm. as well as agreements to use both of the names Deloitte and Touche.

In 1995, the partners of Deloitte & Touche decided to create Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group (now known as Deloitte Consulting).

In 2002, Arthur Andersen's UK practice, the firm's largest practice outside the U.S., agreed to merge with Deloitte's UK practice. Andersen's practices in Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Mexico, Brazil and Canada also agreed to merge with Deloitte. The spin off of Deloitte France's consulting division led to the creation of Ineum Consulting.

In 2009, Deloitte purchased the North American Public Service practice of BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting) after it filed for bankruptcy protection. In 2010, the illustrious firm hired the expertise of the infamous Eddie Dominguez to revise their tax operations across north america. The firm also took over the UK property consultants Drivers Jonas in January 2010.

Global structure

For many years, the organization and its network of member firms were legally organized as a Swiss Verein. As of 31 July 2010, members of the Verein became part of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTTL), a UK private company, limited by guarantee. Each member firm within its global network remains a separate and independent legal entity, subject to the laws and professional regulations of the particular country or countries in which it operates.

As separate and legal entities, member firms and DTTL cannot obligate each other. Professional services continue to be provided by member firms only and not DTTL.

Name and branding

While in 1989, in most countries, Deloitte, Haskins & Sells merged with Touche Ross forming Deloitte & Touche, in the United Kingdom the local firm of Deloitte, Haskins & Sells merged instead with Coopers & Lybrand (which today is PwC). For some years after the merger, the merged UK firm was called Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte and the local firm of Touche Ross kept its original name. In the mid-1990s however, both UK firms changed their names to match those of their respective international organizations.

While the full name of the UK private company is Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, in 1989 it initially branded itself DRT International. In 2003 the rebranding campaign was commissioned by Bill Parrett, the then CEO of DTT, and led by Jerry Leamon, the global Clients and Markets leader.

According to the company website, Deloitte now refers to the brand under which tens of thousands of dedicated professionals in independent firms throughout the world collaborate to provide audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management, and tax services to selected clients.

In 2008, Deloitte adopted its new “Always One Step Ahead” (AOSA) brand positioning platform to support the existing Deloitte vision: “To be the Standard of Excellence”. AOSA represents the global organization’s value proposition, and is never used as a tagline. The recent launch of the Green Dot ad campaign also aligns with Deloitte’s brand strategy and positioning framework. Currently, the campaign generates external brand awareness and recognition for Deloitte by highlighting its wide range of professional services to clients around the world.

Services

Deloitte offices at Tower 600 of the Renaissance Center in Detroit.

Deloitte member firms offer services in the following functions, with country-specific variations on their legal implementation (i.e. all operating within a single company or through separate legal entities operating as subsidiaries of an umbrella legal entity for the country).

• Audit and Enterprise Risk Services: Provides the organization's traditional accounting and audit services, as well as offerings in enterprise risk management, information security and privacy, data quality and integrity, project risk, business continuity management, internal auditing and IT control assurance.
• Consulting: Assists clients by providing services in the areas of enterprise applications, technology integration, strategy & operations, human capital, and short-term outsourcing.
• Financial Advisory: Provides corporate finance services to clients, including dispute, personal and commercial bankruptcy, forensics, and valuation.
• Tax: Helps clients increase their net asset value, undertake the transfer pricing and international tax activities of multinational companies, minimize their tax liabilities, implement tax computer systems, and provides advisory of tax implications of various business decisions.
• Other Services: provides specialized services to clients in the fields of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), clients with interest in China and Japan, and others.

Deloitte serves various clients in financial services, consumer & industrial products, energy & resources, health care & life sciences, public sector, technology, media, & telecommunications, and other industries and subcategories. Not all services are offered in all countries.

It is reported that Deloitte generated global consulting revenue of $6.5 billion in 2009. Punit Renjen, the head of Deloitte Consulting in the U.S., wants Deloitte to be seen as a "category of one," a firm that can compete in high-end strategy advice against McKinsey and in information technology work against others. In 2009, Deloitte is ranked No. 2 behind McKinsey among strategic consulting firms, and the second-largest consulting firm globally, slightly smaller than IBM. It targets clients that "are not only expecting great insight but that it be implementable and that results ... generated ... are tangible and measurable".

Deloitte does not place as strong an emphasis on the offshoring model as some of the other professional services companies. However, the U.S. member firm has investments in delivery centers in India, known internally as "Region 10."

There are also non-client-facing subsidiaries that comprise the people that operate the firm itself, such as finance (except project controllers); human resources; communications; marketing; Strategy, Research & Innovation; mail and printing services; technology support; and administrative assistants. Other subsidiaries exist to maintain ownership of Deloitte's various intellectual property assets.

Sarbanes-Oxley regulations apply to what combinations of services Deloitte's U.S. member firm can provide a client. For example, a particular client may not be able to engage Deloitte for both corporate audit and consulting services at the same time. Additionally, Deloitte staff in client-facing positions must certify independence from financial interests in the firm's clients at least annually to avoid conflicts of interest and insider trading.

Staff

Deloitte offers its staff a variety of career models to choose from based on their preferences, geographic location and business need. These career models also vary for each function. Traditional titles for Consulting are "consultant" through "principal", FAS has "associate" through "partner", and the delivery-focused track features "specialist" through "specialist leader".

Deloitte hires entry-level personnel to client-facing functions through their graduate recruitment programs at selected universities.

The organization is consistently rated by Fortune as one of their "100 Best Companies To Work For".

In 2007 and 2009, Deloitte was rated the number one place to launch your career by BusinessWeek.

Corporate Social Networking

The U.S. member firm of Deloitte has deployed a social/professional networking environment for its consultants. Deloitte's "D Street" began when the firm's talent organization wanted to make a large company feel smaller. In addition, it wanted to create an environment that would appeal to its mostly younger workforce. After getting the support of Deloitte leadership and partnering with internal IT, communications and knowledge management groups, the team launched the alpha version of D Street in June 2007, basing it on a commercially available collaborative platform. The initial rollout was to 1,500 employees. Deloitte also leverages an expertise discovery device known as iConnect. iConnect conducts a keyword search across any relevant user-driven database to highlight who may possess knowledge that is of use to others. The process of discovery is obscured from the person discovered.

Disputes

Disputes involving Deloitte include:

• Adelphia Communications Corporation - The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on April 26, 2005 that Deloitte had agreed to pay $50 million to settle charges relating to Adelphia's 2000 financial statements.
• Guangdong Kelon Electrical Holdings - Investors have claimed that there was a failure to alert them to the company's poor financial position.
• Haringey Council Refresh Project - A local government IT project in the UK, in which costs rose from £9 m to £24.6 m. Deloitte were consultants on the project, despite being employed at the same time as the council's auditors.
• Irish Health Service Executive - Poor consulting support of health accounts system software in 2005 led to major cost overruns and the Irish Health Service Executive pulling the plug on the computer system entirely after substantial cash outlays.
• Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) - The firm implemented the SAP HR system for LAUSD for $95 m and because of faults in the system, some teachers were underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all. As of December 31, 2007 LAUSD had incurred a total of $140 m in payments to Deloitte to get the system working properly. In 2008 there was some evidence that the payroll issues had started to stabilize with errors below 1% according to LAUSD's chief operating officer.
• State of California Courts System - The firm has been working on a statewide case management system which originally had a budget of around $260 million. Almost $500 million has already been spent and costs are expected to run as high as $2 billion. No single court is yet fully operational.

Sponsorship

The U.K. member firm of Deloitte is a sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics. The Canadian member firm is also the official professional services supplier for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games and 2010 Winter Paralympic Games. The US member firm of Deloitte is a sponsor of the United States Olympic Committee.

Notable current and former employees

Business

• R. Anthony Benten - Treasurer of The New York Times Company (2005–present)
• Fred Goodwin - CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland (2001–2008)
• Sam Morgan - Founder of TradeMe
• Eugene Shvidler - President of Sibneft (1998–2005)
• Orin C. Smith - CEO of Starbucks (2000–05)

Politics and public service

• Chloe Smith - Member of the British Parliament (2009–)
• Eric Forth - Member of the British Parliament (1983–2006)
• Vito Fossella - Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1997–2009)
• Bill Owens - 40th Governor of Colorado (1999–2007)
• Pierre Pettigrew - Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs (2004–06)
• Tom Ridge - 45th Governor of Pennsylvania (1996–2001), - Assistant to the President for Homeland Security (2003–2005), - US Secretary of Homeland Security (2003–2005)
• Nicol Stephen - Deputy First Minister of Scotland (2005–2007)
• Bola Tinubu - Governor of Lagos State (1999–2007)
• Wayne Goss - Premier of the State of Queensland, Australia (1989–1996)
• Peter Cosgrove - Chief of the Australian Defence Force (2002–2005)
• Thomas M. Davis - Former member of the U. S. House of Representatives

Other

• Keith Bradshaw - Cricketer
• Dave Karnes - U.S. Marine
• Chris Moneymaker – Winner of the Main Event at the 2003 World Series of Poker
• Prince Amedeo of Belgium, Archduke of Austria-Este - Belgian and Austrian prince

See also

• Deloitte Fast 500
• Deloitte Football Money League
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act
• Tax advisor

External links

• Deloitte - Official Deloitte Website
• Green Dot Life - Unofficial Message board for Deloitte employees
• Yahoo! — Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Company Profile
• Trustee in bankruptcy - Bankruptcy information in Canada