Pwc vs Deloitte

Pwcis the product of two separate Victorian accounting practices. Price Waterhouse was founded in London in 1849 by Samuel Lowell Price and later expanded by Edwin Waterhouse. Coopers & Lybrand was founded by William Cooper in 1854. For nearly 150 years, the two firms were direct competitors — both operating globally, both serving the world's largest companies, both considered among the most prestigious names in the profession.

Price Waterhouse won the audit of U.S. Steel — the world's first billion-dollar corporation — in the early twentieth century, establishing itself as the auditor of choice for America's largest industrial companies. In an era before the SEC existed, the name "Price Waterhouse" on an audit report was the closest thing to a government guarantee of financial credibility.

Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand completed their merger in 1998, creating Pwc— at the time the largest professional services firm in the world. The merger reduced the Big Six accounting firms to the Big Five. Two firms that had competed for 150 years became one overnight.

At the 89th Academy Awards ceremony in February 2017, PwC accountants mistakenly handed presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong envelope. Beatty announced La La Land as Best Picture. Producers and cast members took the stage. Then a PwC representative walked on and announced that the actual winner was Moonlight. The firm had managed the Oscars vote count for 83 years without incident. The two accountants responsible were never allowed to work the Oscars again. PwC retained the contract.

In 2023, PwC Australia became the centre of one of the most damaging scandals in the firm's history. A senior partner had leaked confidential government tax policy information to colleagues, who used it to advise corporate clients on how to avoid new tax rules before they were announced. The scandal triggered parliamentary inquiries, forced the resignation of PwC Australia's CEO, and prompted a global review of how the Big Four's consulting and audit practices conflict with each other.

PwC laid off approximately 5,600 employees globally in 2025 — including 1,500 in the U.S. alone — after global revenue growth slowed to 2.9%, its lowest rate since the pandemic-recovery boom. The firm had aggressively expanded headcount between 2021 and 2023, and with attrition falling sharply, it had more staff than clients demanded. Meanwhile, PwC spent approximately $1.5 billion on AI capabilities between July 2024 and June 2025, attempting to position the firm for a future where AI would do much of the analytical work that had made consulting firms valuable. Advisory revenue grew just 4.5% in 2025. The question facing PwC — and every major consulting firm — was whether AI would eventually replace the human judgment that justified their fees, or whether it would simply be another tool to sell to clients at a premium.

William Welch Deloitte opened an accounting practice in London in 1845, at a time when the profession of accountancy barely existed as a formal discipline. His early clients included the Great Western Railway — one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in Victorian England. The railways were the first businesses complex enough to require independent financial oversight. In 1849, Deloitte was appointed the first independent auditor of a public company in history.

Deloitte opened its first U.S. office in New York in 1893, following its British clients as they expanded into American markets. The U.S. would eventually become the firm's largest market. The transatlantic expansion established a template that the major accounting firms would follow for the next century: grow internationally by following clients, not by seeking new ones.

Deloitte Haskins & Sells merged with Touche Ross in 1989, creating Deloitte & Touche — one of the largest accounting mergers in history. The combined firm had over 60,000 employees in 100 countries. The merger was driven by the need to serve multinational clients who required consistent audit standards across borders. This consolidation dynamic would eventually reduce the global audit market to just four dominant firms.

When Arthur Andersen collapsed in 2002 following the Enron scandal, Deloitte was the only Big Five firm that did not aggressively acquire Andersen's practice. While KPMG, Ernst & Young, and Pwcabsorbed thousands of Andersen partners and clients, Deloitte grew more selectively. The restraint proved wise: the firms that grew fastest from Andersen's collapse also inherited the most regulatory scrutiny.

Deloitte reported revenues of approximately $64 billion in fiscal year 2023, making it the world's largest professional services firm — a position it retained for years afterward, ranked No. 1 by revenue by Gartner for the eighth consecutive year in 2025. The firm employed over 450,000 people across 150 countries. However, the consulting industry faced headwinds in 2024-2025: Deloitte cut advisory roles in the UK as large-scale project demand softened, and reduced U.S. government consulting headcount as federal contracts were restructured under the DOGE efficiency initiative. AI was simultaneously threatening to automate the analytical work that had made consulting firms valuable — and creating enormous new demand for AI strategy and implementation work. Deloitte was racing to position itself on both sides of that disruption.