Talk:PricewaterhouseCoopers

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[edit] Citation

"PricewaterhouseCoopers (or PwC) is the world's largest professional services firm." Could somebody please confirm this? I was under the impression that the big 4 firms did not have a definate ranking between them. -- 125.238.40.208 05:00, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

PwC is the biggest by revenue and number of employees... this can easily be seen in any of the Four's accounting statements.

Also PwC is the fourth (or was last year) biggest private company in the US. The only companies that are larger were all manufacturing companies... so yes, this statement is true and is not contested by any Big Four member. (The others' targets often involve catching up with PwC). I don't think this is a controversial statement at all and is widely-known information but if you would wish for more evidence on the page, it can quite easily be provided (even if it will make the page that little bit more cluttered)--Zoso Jade 16:13, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is said to have 150,000 employees though on their wiki page. I'm just trying to clear up the accuracy here. 125.238.40.208 07:09, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Can we please stop changing it from being a "professional services" firm to calling it an "accountancy firm". The firm is made up of a wide variety of other professionals including IT and strategy consultants, actuaries and even lawyers. The firm describes itself as a professional services firm. Wikipedia should do the same.--Zoso Jade (talk) 12:31, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

OK. It is generally accepted that PWC is a professional services firm. But you have given no independent source to support your statement that it is one of the world's largest professional services firms: statements like this should be properly sourced or deleted Dormskirk (talk) 22:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Just to be clear I did not make the original size claim; I merely commented on it... but I agree with its inlcusion. It is a difficult one to show, the fourth largest private company in the US statement was from Forbes magazine - it is now fifth [1]. I don't know whether there are any other independent sources though again I must stress that this is hardly a debated stat - I note the McDonald's article offers no proof of it being the largest fast-food chain presumably on the basis of general public acceptance - when there is no one even close it seems rather pedantic to require hard proof (which is often unavailable). Likewise, the big four auditors are so much bigger than other professional services firms, from law firms to management consultancies that it seems almost absurd to embark on a quest for rigorous proof (for comparison, Clifford Chance the world's largest law firm had revenues last year of less than 1/10th that of PwC. Mckinsey fared slighlty better at 1/5th.). I would be tempted to keep it in there until someone was ready to offer up a professional services firm with higher revenue/ larger market capitalisation, an unlikely event. Let me know your thoughts on this.--Zoso Jade (talk) 14:27, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I am happy to proceed as you suggest - I agree it probably is one of the world's largest professional services firms even if we cannot prove it Dormskirk (talk) 20:06, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Name Change

Didn't PwC change their name to "Monday" or something equally amusing a while ago (and then change it back when everybody laughed at them)? Or was that just a weird dream I had? --Camembert

They almost did. PWC Consulting planned to change its name to Monday before its IPO, but IBM offered to buy it out not long after the decision, which scrapped the name-change plans. See [2] (BBC), [3] (InformationWeek). --Geoffrey

[edit] Sam Piazza age??

The site says Sam Piazza is 45 years old (ie born in 1959/1960).... The article also says he joined the firm in 1973 and made partner in '79. He joined the firm at 13 and made partner at 19??? Just what kind of hotshot are we talking about here?

[edit] neutrality

Some of this article currently reads like an advert for PwC. Case in point:

"The Advisory Service offerings are woven around creating exceptional value for clients."

Articles on Wikipedia are supposed to be NPOV.--Zoso Jade 13:22, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] incorrect sentence

"Because its only products are the outputs of its personnel, the firm has a competitive recruiting program."

As there are few companies that have products that aren't the output of the company's personnel, it is likely the author of this line meant "Because its major asset is the expertise of its personnel..." --Zoso Jade 15:17, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

There are, in fact, many companies who's products are not the output of its' employees or personnel. A supermarket chain is a prime example of a company who's products are definately not an output of its' employees. In a manufacturing enviroment or in Price Waterhouse Coopers' case, a service enviroment (notwithstanding its' other product offerings), it would be true to say sometnig along the lines of: "Its' only products are an output of its employees". All of this is pretty obvious.All they can generate revenue through are the services they offer,unlike some of the above mentioned companies, that is why the line read as it did.

As a result,even though i was not the original author, i am changing the line back to its original format.

[edit] Headquarters

I've changed "headquarters: New York" to "headquarters: London" here - this still isn't entirely accurate, as the London-based international limited company does co-ordination between member firms rather than overall management, but is more accurate than suggesting that the US partnership's HQ is the HQ for the international firm --Stalinism 10:46, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The Chairman's office is based at 300 Madison Avenue in New York. Housed here are at least two Line of Service Leaders and the Global Chief Executive. Probably fair to say that New York is the global headquarters. I would view the London office as secondary, but its probably worthwhile noting that the associated legal firm, Landwell, is HQ'd in London. Matt.hatton 07:56, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clients

I noticed on the EY page that they list their audit clients by industry. I think it would be worthwhile including this information, because I have often thought about this myself, and its hard to come by a definitive list. (15:12, 19 October 2006 (UTC))

Here is the PwC list of industries (please add any companies you can find):

   * Aerospace & Defence
   * Automotive: Ford Motor Company
   * Chemicals
   * Education & Nonprofit
   * Energy, Utilities & Mining: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Royal Dutch Shell
   * Engineering & Construction
   * Entertainment & Media: Verisign, Paramount, Yahoo!, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
   * Financial Services: Westpac, JPMorganChase, Barclays, Lloyds, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs
   * Forest, Paper & Packaging
   * Government/Public Services
   * Healthcare
   * Hospitality & Leisure
   * Industrial Manufacturing
   * Insurance
   * Investment Management & Real Estate
   * Metals
   * Pharmaceuticals
   * Retail & Consumer: Nike
   * Technology: IBM
   * Telecommunications: Hutchinson Wapora (Orange/Three)
   * Transportation & Logistics

[edit] At Binghamton

I go to Binghamton (check the IP if you want). The academia tab violates NPOV and was shameless self-promotion, probably by another Binghamton student. What can I say? We do love our self-promotion :^) --149.125.200.78 07:38, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doesn't Honor Its Commitments

About once a week when I go to work in downtown Vancouver I see this older guy walking around with this sign in front of PWC with a sign saying something like "PWC doesn't honor its commitments". And then on the other side of the sign it says something about its older employees. I couldn't find anything about this on google or google news. Anyone know anything about this?

[edit] Moved "working mothers" award

I hope no one minds. In the "Staff" section I moved the bit about PwC being in the top 10 companies for working mothers to the end of the awards listed there. My reasoning for this is that of all the awards it is the one that is relevant to the least number of staff (I feel being in Fortune's 100 best companies to work for, or The Times no 1. place to work for graduates is far more relevant as it covers all staff). This is not to diminish the importance of the working mother award, but most PwC staff aren't working mothers and I don't believe that an award that relates to a minority of staff probably shouldn't be the second line in the section.--Zoso Jade 19:12, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Philanthropy

"PwC is known for a large investment in various philanthropic activities". The firm's website and annual report does not seem to make that claim. The article refers to the sponsorship of the Binghamton University School of Management PricewaterhouseCoopers Honors Program, but does not indicate how much that costs. Is it "philanthropy" to sponsor a program if you are trying to recruit its graduates? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Swinnow16 (talk • contribs) 09:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC). Swinnow16 09:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem is that the statement is too broad, particularly the term 'large investment'. Maybe some specific examples of PwC's philanthropic activities? E.g. in the Perth office they invest in local charities and sponsor employees to take days off to visit sick children, plant trees etc. Metathesiophobia 16:50, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:COaLY.gif

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[edit] Founder: Price?

According to the first sentence of the second paragraph in the "History" section, a person named Eve Ryan is mentioned as starting his accounting business. The next sentence goes on to refer to a person named only "Price". There's gotta be an error here, right? I thought Samuel Price was a founder, not this Eve Ryan. (Then again, I'm not really into accounting.) Thoughts? --Alika 02:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Saw the correction. Thanks! --Alika 21:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Russia

Shouldn't there be at least a short mentioning of the pressure by the Russian government in the YUKOS case? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.172.245.97 (talk) 22:00, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 10:56, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia as a source

I have just removed a cite using another wp article as a source. Suppose incorrect information is found in wikipedia somewhere (if you can imagine...). Now let's support that bad info. It appears in the article "A", citing "B". "B", meanwhile, cites "C". "C" cites "A". Obvious problem. - Mdsummermsw (talk) 14:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I totally agree with you in principle: that said in this case the table at the top of the article on Big Four auditors is at least referenced to sources Dormskirk (talk) 23:04, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
I have now inserted an independent source: see paragraph 2 of the Accountancy Age article Dormskirk (talk) 17:32, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality of article / Completeness of articles

Hi, I saw that you deleted twice the name of Paul Bernardo from the list of notable workers or former workers of Pricewaterhouse. You explained it as vandalism... but Paul Bernardo, famous canadian criminal, was an employee of Pricewaterhouse, so I just can't see where's the problem. Everybody can add in the articles a piece of what he knows about the subject, so why not put this name? it's not a statement about the firm, it is a FACT, so according to Wikipedia's policy it is hard to erase my entry as it is genuine and proved...

Thanks Joe Dietrich —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.46.228.75 (talk) 16:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I accept that this is a fact. But I consider that this fact is not relevent to an understanding of the firm's business. Dormskirk (talk) 17:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)