Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu

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Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
Type Swiss Verein
Founded London, United Kingdom (1845)
Headquarters New York City, New York, U.S. [1]
Key people Barry Salzberg, CEO
John P. Connolly, Chairman
Industry Professional services
Services Audit
Tax
Consulting
Financial advisory
Revenue US$23.1 billion (2007)
Employees 155,000 (April 2007)
Website www.deloitte.com

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (also referred to as Deloitte & Touche, and branded as Deloitte.) is one of the largest professional services firms in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG.

According to the firm's website as of 2007, Deloitte has approximately 150,000 professionals at work in 142 countries, delivering audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory services.[1]

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is a Swiss Verein, a membership organization under the Swiss Civil Code whereby each member firm is a separate and independent legal entity. Its global headquarters are located in New York City, New York.[2] European headquarters are located in London.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Early history

In 1845 William Welch Deloitte opened an office in Basinghall Street in London: he was the first person to be appointed an independent auditor of a public company.[3] He went on to open an office in New York in 1880.[3]

In 1895 Charles Waldo Haskins and Eijah Watt Sells formed Haskins & Sells in New York.[3]

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.[3] 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.

[edit] 1930s

See also: Ultramares Corporation v. Touche

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 traded corporations.[3]

[edit] 1940s

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.[3] 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 cofounder of Touche Niven, George Touche: the Canadian organization Ross, Touche and the British organization George A. Touche.[3] In 1960, the firm was renamed Touche, Ross, Bailey & Smart, becoming Touche Ross in 1969.[3]

[edit] The 1950s

In 1952 Deloitte merged with Haskins & Sells to form Deloitte, Haskins & Sells.[3]

[edit] The 1960s

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.[3]

[edit] The 1970s

In 1972 Robert Trueblood, Chairman of Touche Ross, led the committee responsible for recommending the establishment of the Financial Accounting Standards Board.[3] He led the expansion of Touche Ross in that era.

[edit] The 1980s

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 Touche Ross merged with Deloitte Haskins Sells to form Deloitte & Touche: the merged firm was led by J. Michael Cook and Edward A. Kangas.

[edit] The 1990s

Deloitte Office Building in Downtown Chicago
Deloitte Office Building in Downtown Chicago

In 1993 the international firm was renamed Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu to reflect the contribution from the Japanese firm.[3]

In 1995, the partners of Deloitte & Touche decided to create Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group (later Deloitte Consulting).[4]

[edit] The 2000s

Following the demise of Arthur Andersen in 2002, the UK business of Arthur Andersen was absorbed by Deloitte.

[edit] 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 PricewaterhouseCoopers).[5] 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 organisations.

While the full name of the firm is Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, in 1989 it initially branded itself Deloitte & Touche and then simply Deloitte. with a round green dot following the name. In 2003 the rebranding campaign was comissioned by Bill Parrett, the then CEO of DTT, and led by Jerry Lehman, the global Clients and Markets leader.[6]

[edit] Services

Deloitte & Touche LLP in the UK offers all four of the following service lines, all operating within a single company sometimes with professionals from different areas working alongside each other:[7]

  • Audit
  • Tax
  • Consulting
  • Financial Advisory (or Corporate Finance)

In comparison, Deloitte LLP (the US member firm) is composed of several function-specific subsidiaries, each of which is a separate legal entity but a wholly owned subsidiary. Some countries' member firms are organized differently.

  • Deloitte Consulting LLP: Provides consulting services to various clients in Financial Services, Consumer & Industrial Products, Health Care & Life Sciences, Public Sector, and other industries and subcategories. The specific consulting capabilities are organized into Service Areas: Enterprise Applications, Technology Integration, Strategy & Operations, Human Capital, and Extended Business Services (XBS), which are further broken down into relevant subcategories. They concentrate on providing more solid and defined business processes for companies which previously lacked them.[8]
  • Deloitte & Touche LLP: This function is known internally as Audit & Enterprise Risk Services, and provides the firm's traditional accounting and audit services, as well as offerings in risk management, security, data quality & integrity and IT control assurance.[9]
  • Deloitte Tax LLP: This function provides traditional tax advisory services to clients, as well as offerings in tax systems and advisory of tax implications on various parts of the business: mergers & acquisitions, ERP package implementation, etc.[10]
  • Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP: This function provides financial advisory services to clients, including dispute, forensics, and valuation.[11]
  • Deloitte Services LP: While not a client-facing subsidiary, this vital function comprises people that operate the firm itself, such as finance, human resources, marketing, Strategy, Research & Innovation (SR&I), mail and printing services, technology support, and administrative assistants.

The Deloitte US firms started it's operations in India in the year 2000, now called Region 10. Since then they have led the way in remote delivery of services. Their offices in Mumbai and Hyderabad currently employ over 6000 professionals across all it's business.

[edit] Staff

The firm is rated by Fortune as one of the 100 best companies to work for.[12]

In 2007, Deloitte was rated the number one place to launch your career by Business Week.[13]

[edit] Criticisms

During 2007 Deloitte faced sustained criticism over the payroll system it implemented for the Los Angeles Unified School District ('LAUSD'). The firm sold the system to LAUSD for US$95m and because of faults in the system the schoolteachers were underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all.[14] As at 31 December 2007 LAUSD had incurred a total of US$140m in payments to Deloitte to get the system working properly.[15] However in January 2008 there was some evidence that that the payroll issues had started to stabilize with errors below 1% according to LAUSD's chief operating officer.[16]

One conequence of this dispute is that on January 6, 2008 a bill was introduced in the California State Assembly by Assistant Majority Leader Kevin de Leon (Democrat - Los Angeles) that would "prohibit vendors who fail to fulfill their contractual obligations from bidding on new contracts with public entities for a period of five years".[17]

Other disputes involving Deloitte include:

[edit] Notable current and former employees

[edit] Business

[edit] Politics and public service

[edit] Other

[edit] Clients

Major clients include (note that not all of these are audit clients):

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

[edit] Data