Ernst & Young

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services firms in the world, and a Big 4 accountancy firm, along with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (Deloitte) and KPMG.

Ernst & Young is a global partnership of many member firms, with the largest member being the American firm. Ernst & Young has its global headquarters at Becket House, London, UK.

History

America and UK

The company is the result of a series of mergers of ancestor organizations. The oldest originating company was founded in 1849 in England as Harding & Pullein. In that year the company was joined by the American Frederick Whinney. He was made a partner in 1859 and with his sons in the business it was renamed Whinney, Smith & Whinney in 1894.

In 1903, the firm of Ernst & Ernst was established in Cleveland by Alwin and Theodore Ernst and in 1906 Arthur Young & Company was set up by the Scotsman Arthur Young in Chicago.

As early as 1924 these American firms allied with prominent British firms. Young with Broads Paterson & Co., and Ernst with Whinney Smith and Whinney. In 1979 this led to the formation of anglo-american Ernst & Whinney, creating the fourth largest accountancy firm in the world. In 1989, the number four merged with the then number five, Arthur Young, to create Ernst & Young ("EY").

Rest of the world

The American EY ancestor firms opened offices around the world in order to service their international clients. In 1979 the European offices of Arthur Young joined several large local European firms, which themselves became member firms of Arthur Young International. The big merger in 1989, creating Ernst & Young, was effected by mergers between Ernst & Whinney offices and Arthur Young member firms in all countries involved.

EY has about 5,000 staff in China.

Service lines

EY has three main service lines:

• Assurance and Advisory Business Services. Globally, EY has the highest revenues of the Big Four in this area and this accounts for 70% of its revenues. This comprises assurance, business risk, fraud investigation and disputes, technology & security risk, actuarial and finance and performance management services.
• Global Tax Advisory Services
• Transaction Advisory Services

Acquisitions and divestitures

In October 1997, EY announced plans to merge their global practices with KPMG to create the largest professional services organization in the world, coming on the heels of another merger plan announced in September 1997 by Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. The merger plans were abandoned in February 1998 due to client opposition, antitrust issues, cost problems and difficulty of merging the two diverse companies and cultures.

The partnership built up its consultancy arm heavily during the 1980s and 90s. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and members of the investment community began to raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest between the consulting and auditing work. In May 2000, EY was the first of the Big Four firms to formally and fully separate its consulting practices via a sale to the French IT services company Cap Gemini for $11 billion, largely in stock, creating the new consulting firm of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, which was later renamed Capgemini. Recently, Ernst & Young has started building a significant finance & performance management advisory services practice.

In 2002, EY merged with most of the ex-Arthur Andersen practices around the world, although not those in the USA, UK or the Netherlands.

Significant audit clients

EY is the auditor for major global corporations, including the following (as verified by their annual reports):

• Retail & Consumer Products: Wal-Mart, Target, Coke, Marriott, Amazon.com, McDonalds, eBay, Next, Intercontinental Hotels, Hilton, Starwood
• Travel: American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, British Airways, Singapore Airlines, China Airlines, Scania, Pinnacle Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways
• Technology: Google, Intel, AMD, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Baidu
• Media: Time Warner, EMI, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music, News Corporation, ntl:Telewest
• Telecoms: Verizon, Telefonica, AT&T, Global Crossing, Telstra, France Telecom, Orange, Telenor
• Energy: BP, Total, ConocoPhillips, Kazakhmys, Xstrata, CNOOC, Atmos Energy
• Industrial Products: Delphi Corporation, LVMH, Lafarge, Thales Group, Hanson, FedEx, Eli Lilly, Porsche
• Financial Services: UBS,ING,Piper Jaffray, Aviva, Lehman Brothers, ABN AMRO, Société Générale, ICBC, Bank of New York, US Bank
• Real Estate: Emaar, Nakheel, Cushman & Wakefield, Westfield Group, Mapeley Plc, Brixton Plc
• Government: Royal Mail, Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Royal Australian Mint

Publicity

Ernst & Young's publicity activity includes its worldwide Entrepreneur of the Year program, run in 35 countries. ^[1] Previous Entrepreneur Of The Year winners include Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Pierre Omidyar of eBay, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, Catherine L. Hughes and Alfred Liggins of Radio One, and Jim McCann of 1-800-Flowers.com.

EY UK also publicizes itself by sponsoring big name art exhibitions, eg Cezanne, Picasso, Bonnard and Monet. This year's exhibition will be Rodin at the Royal Academy of Arts^[2]. Ernst & Young UK is based at More London.

EY Australia recently moved into prominent new offices in Sydney and Melbourne at the Latitude (building) Sydney and in Exhibition Street, Melbourne.

In April 2004, Equitable Life, a UK life assurance company, sued EY after nearly collapsing following a House of Lords judgement that it had to pay guaranteed annuities held by its policyholders. Equitable claimed that EY neglected its duty as auditor and demanded £4bn in compensation. Equitable abandoned the case in September 2005 and paid EY's legal costs. EY described the case as "a scandalous waste of time, money and resources for all concerned." ^[3]

Diversity

In the US, minorities make up 24% of its workforce, up from 16% in 1996. The firm's nondiscrimination policy now includes gender identity. The firm is consistently named as one of the 100 Best Companies To Work For (and the highest among the Big Four) by Fortune Magazine. The firm was also named as one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mothers magazine.

In the US, Ernst & Yong was ranked No. 12 on the list of 2005 Top 500 H1B Visa Sponsor, according to myvisaobs.com 2005 H1B Visa Report

In the UK, EY has the highest proportion of women partners amongst the "Big Four" (15%), and the firm claims it is taking visible action to improve the proportion of ethnic minorities in senior positions. It recently appointed a senior partner to lead its diversity efforts and won a place in the 2006 Top 50 Places Where Women Want to Work awards [1]

Notable current and former employees

Business

• Karan Bilimoria, Baron Bilimoria - founder of Cobra Beer
• Andrew Gould - chairman and CEO of Schlumberger (2003-present)
• Ed Grier - president of the Disneyland Resort (2006-present)
• Chris Kubasik - CFO of Lockheed Martin (2001-present)
• Sean Wise - venture capital commentator
• Patricia A. Woertz - CEO of Archer Daniels Midland (2006-present)
• Clemens Wohlmuth - chairman and CEO of Czech On Line (2006-present)

Politics and public service

• John Campbell - Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (2005-present)
• Jun Choi - Mayor of Edison, New Jersey (2006-present)
• Christopher Chope - Member of the British Parliament (1983-92; 1997-present)
• Gerard Ee - President of the Singaporean National Council of Social Service
• Sheila Fraser - Auditor General of Canada (2001-present)
• Cheryl Gillan - Member of the British Parliament (1992-present)
• George McCarthy - Chief Secretary of the Cayman Islands (2004-present)
• Edward H Ntalami - CEO of the Kenyan Capital Markets Authority (2002-present)
• Mark Olson - Member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve (2001-06)
• Mark Olson - Chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
• Hugo Schiltz - Belgian Senator (1992-95)

Other

• Kimberly Clarice Aiken - Miss America 1994
• Bill Capodagli - business writer
• Maris Martinsons - academic
• Edward Psaltis -yachtsman

Notes

External links

• Ernst & Young Global homepage
• Entrepreneur of the Year Homepage
• myvisajobs.com 2005 H1B Visa Report, NO. 12