Deloitte
Deloitte is a British multinational professional services network based in London, United Kingdom. It is the largest professional services network in the world by revenue and number of employees, and is one of the Big Four accounting firms, along with EY, KPMG, and PwC. The Deloitte network is composed of member firms of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited a private company limited by guarantee incorporated in England and Wales.
The firm was founded by accountant William Welch Deloitte in London, England in 1845 and expanded into the United States in 1890. It merged with Haskins & Sells to form Deloitte Haskins & Sells in 1972 and with Touche Ross in the US to form Deloitte & Touche in 1989. In 1993, the international firm was renamed Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, later abbreviated to Deloitte. In 2002, Arthur Andersen's practice in the UK as well as several of that firm's practices in Europe and North and South America agreed to merge with Deloitte. Subsequent acquisitions have included Monitor Group, a large strategy consulting business, in 2013.
Deloitte provides audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk, tax, and legal services with approximately 470,000 employees globally, and operates in over 150 countries. In FY 2024, the network earned revenues of US$67.2 billion in aggregate. The firm has sponsored a number of activities and events, including the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The firm suffered a major cyberattack in 2017, causing a breach in client confidentiality and publicizing a significant amount of employee information. Deloitte has also been subject to litigation regarding several of its audits.
History
Early history
In 1845, William Welch Deloitte opened an office in Basinghall Street in London, England. Deloitte was the first person to be appointed an independent auditor of a public company, namely the Great Western Railway. He went on to open an office in New York in 1880. The firm was based at No. 4 Lothbury in London from 1855 to 1905, when it moved to No. 54 London Wall Buildings.In 1890, Deloitte opened a branch office on Wall Street headed by Edward Adams and P.D. Griffiths as branch managers. This was Deloitte's first overseas venture. Other branches were soon opened in Chicago and Buenos Aires. In 1898 P.D. Griffiths returned from New York and became a partner in the London office.
In 1896, Charles Waldo Haskins and Elijah Watt Sells formed Haskins & Sells in New York. It was later described as "the first major auditing firm to be established in the country by American rather than British accountants".
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.
On 1 March 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. In 1968 Nobuzo Tohmatsu formed Tohmatsu Aoki & 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.
Meanwhile, the head office of Deloitte's firm moved to No. 128 Queen Victoria Street in London in September 1964. In 1972, Deloitte's firm merged with Haskins & Sells to form Deloitte Haskins & Sells.
In 1989, Deloitte Haskins & Sells merged with Touche Ross in the US 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. Some member firms of Touche Ross also rejected the merger with Deloitte Haskins & Sells and merged with other firms. In the UK, Touche Ross merged with Spicer & Oppenheim in 1990.
Recent history
At the time of the US-led mergers to form Deloitte & Touche, the name of the 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 the 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.In 1995, the partners of Deloitte & Touche decided to create Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group.
In 2000, Deloitte acquired Eclipse to add internet design to its consulting capabilities. Eclipse was later separated into Deloitte Online and Deloitte Digital.
In 2002, Arthur Andersen's UK practice, the firm's largest practice outside the US, 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 spinoff of Deloitte France's consulting division led to the creation of Ineum Consulting.
In 2005, Deloitte acquired Beijing Pan-China CPA to become the largest accountancy firm in China. Just prior to this acquisition Deloitte China had about 3,200 employees. This acquisition was part of a five-year plan to invest $150 million in China. Deloitte has had a presence in China since 1917.
In 2007, Deloitte began hiring former employees of the Central Intelligence Agency for their competitive intelligence unit known as Deloitte Intelligence.
In 2009, Deloitte purchased the North American public service practice of BearingPoint for $350 million after it filed for bankruptcy protection.
Deloitte LLP took over the UK property consultants Drivers Jonas in January 2010. As of 2013, this business unit was known as Deloitte Real Estate.
In 2011, Deloitte acquired DOMANI Sustainability Consulting and ClearCarbon Consulting in order to expand its sustainability service offerings.
In January 2012, Deloitte announced the acquisition of Übermind, a mobile advertising agency. The acquisition marked Deloitte's first entrance into the mobile application field.
In November 2012, Deloitte acquired Recombinant Data Corporation, a company specializing in data warehousing and clinical intelligence software, and launched Recombinant by Deloitte. In February 2013 Recombinant by Deloitte merged with an internal informatics unit and launched ConvergeHEALTH by Deloitte.
On 11 January 2013, Deloitte purchased substantially all of the business of Monitor Group, the strategy consulting firm founded by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, after Monitor filed for bankruptcy protection.
In 2014, the company introduced Rubix, a blockchain consultancy providing advisory services for clients in different business sectors, including government. In 2016 the company created its first blockchain lab in Dublin. A second hub was launched in New York in January 2017. In 2016, Deloitte Canada set up a Bitcoin automatic teller machine and equipped a restaurant in its office complex to accept Bitcoin as payment. Deloitte CIS partnered with Waves Platform to offer services related to initial coin offerings. Deloitte became a member of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance and the Hyperledger Project sponsored by the Linux Foundation in May 2017.
In 2016, Deloitte acquired the advertising agency Heat of San Francisco, best known for its work for Madden NFL from EA Sports and the Hotwire travel website. Heat was the 11th digital marketing agency purchased by Deloitte Digital since its founding in 2012. As of 2016, Deloitte Digital had 7,000 employees. It billed $2.1 billion in 2015, making it one of world's largest digital agencies.
In September 2016, Apple Inc. announced a partnership with Deloitte aimed at boosting sales of its phones and other mobile devices to businesses. As part of the partnership, the two companies will launch a service called Enterprise Next, in which more than 5,000 Deloitte consultants will advise clients on how to make better use of Apple products and services.
In October 2016, Deloitte announced that they were creating Deloitte North West Europe. The Belgian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish member firms will combine with the UK and Swiss member firms to create Deloitte North West Europe. Deloitte, over the next three years, would invest €200m to enhance its services to its global, national and private market clients and to create development opportunities. The firm came into effect on 1 June 2017 and it is estimated to have 28,000 partners and people generating over €5bn in annual revenue. Deloitte North West Europe accounts for approximately 20% of all revenue within their Global Network.
In March 2022, Deloitte announced that, as a result of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the firm would no longer carry out business in Russia or Belarus, and would separate its practices within these countries from its global network of firms.
In March 2022, Deloitte acquired Etain, a data and digital transformation specialist company, based in Northern Ireland.
The Wall Street Journal reported in June 2022 that the firm might choose to divide itself into two new companies, one accounting firm and one advisory firm. The Wall Street Journal reported this potential change several weeks after reporting that Ernst & Young was considering a similar split.
In November 2023, Deloitte entered into a supply contract with Henchmann, a provider of contract drafting and negotiation software that scans and extracts key data points from legal documents.
In 2024, Deloitte, Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services provided a combined $40 million in funding to multiple cancer institutes to support the establishment of the Cancer AI Alliance.
In May 2025, the company informed its UK consulting division it planned to reduce pay rises and cut bonuses by 20 per cent following poor financial performance.