TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, JULY 04, 2007 02:06:06 AM]
MUMBAI: Four senior executives from PricewaterhouseCoopers have
joined rival and professional services major Deloitte Touche
Tohmatsu signalling a pick up in consolidation activity in the tax
and consulting space and also highlighting the frequent movements by
top professionals in the Big Four firms.
Roopen Roy, a former managing director at PwC, Joydeep Datta Gupta,
Jaideep Ganguli and Arindam Guha, all senior executives with PwC,
have joined as senior partners with Deloitte barely months after PwC
acquired tax practice firm RSM Ambit.
The movements came at a time when Indian companies are increasingly
looking at mergers and acquisitions as a route to grow and
consultant organisations have seen a rise in the contribution of
merger advisory as a share of total revenues.
"These appointments are part of our strategy to grow our non-attest
services," said Deloitte global managing partner Manoj Singh. Non-
attest services include book keeping, tax compliance, preparing
financial statements, valuation of businesses, corporate strategy
planning and other related functions.
Although senior Deloitte executives including Mr Singh, pointed to
the importance of the Indian market and the growth in Indian
corporate activity as the reason for increasing their consulting
business, it is also learnt that delay in ironing out integration
issues at PwC, after the RSM acquisition could likely have led to
the walk out by Mr Roopen Roy and his associates.
Mr Roy declined to comment on the reasons for moving out of PwC. At
Deloitte, Mr Roy will now look after the newly-formed Deloitte &
Touche Consulting India and is also scheduled to join the global
consulting executive team. "Deloitte is the only firm (among the Big
Four) that hasn't sold its consulting business so we would providing
a full suite of services," Mr Roy said.
Strict regulatory norms after the Enron collapse in 2002 had led
most of the Big Four firms, except Deloitte, to sell off their
consultancy businesses. The current move by Deloitte to appoint the
four senior partners is also part of a series of recruitment that
Deloitte has done in India. At 8,000 employees, Deloitte is the
largest professional services firm in India and has currently more
than 300 people in the consulting space alone.
"We'll take the total employee figure to 12,000 in next four years,"
said Mr Singh, while outlining the company's plans for Deloitte
India. Mr Singh too, was recently elevated as global managing
partner of the $23 billion Deloitte, from his previous position as
managing partner for the Asia Pacific region. At about the same
time, Deloitte also announced the formation of a separate unit for
corporate finance and private equity "to provide transaction-related
services across the deal cycle from origination to completion."
The consulting space in India is likely to see lot of action as
mergers and acquisitions are picking speed: Tata Steel bought Corus
for about $13 billion, while Hindalco acquired Canada's Novelis for
$6 billion.
Private equity flows are also increasing. According to the Centre
for Asia Private Equity Research, India has seen $3.7 billion worth
of private equity investments in the January-June period, ahead of
China which saw investments of $2.6 billion in the same period.
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