• Focus on our purpose drives good revenue growth in all major markets and areas of business
• 25,000 new jobs created, increasing our workforce to 276,000
• US$3bn investment in upskilling PwC people, developing and sharing technologies to support clients and communities
• Commitment to tackle the skills gap and reach millions of people by working with governments, businesses and NGOs
• Progress on audit quality with continued investment to improve quality in all businesses
• Major investment in technology - on track to be one of the most cloud-enabled organisations in the world
03 October 2019 - For the 12 months ending 30 June 2019, PwC firms around the world generated gross revenues of US$42.4 billion – up 7% in local currency and 4% in US dollars. Revenues grew across all lines of business and major markets, boosted by the power of the PwC brand and continued significant investments in quality, technology and people.
“Our local strategy is aligned to the PwC network priorities as we continue to invest in technology and upskilling our people, to make our services more relevant to our clients and stakeholders,” said Anthony Leung Shing, Country Senior Partner at PwC Mauritius. “As our clients in Mauritius and the region face increasing challenges and opportunities driven by technological advances, stakeholder expectations and other changes, they require us to work together across the broad range of our operations helping them to deal with issues such as cyber security, trust, regulation and strategic workforce planning,” he added.
A good performance across the world
In the Americas, revenues were up by 5% compared with 4% the prior year, with a particularly strong performance from operations in the United States and Canada, offset by some challenging economic conditions in Brazil where revenue rose by 2%. Growth in Western Europe was up by 7%. In Central and Eastern Europe, revenues continued to grow strongly - up 10% - marking the fourth consecutive year of double digit growth. Revenue growth from the Middle East and Africa was also strong, despite some challenging market conditions, increasing by 9%. Across Asia, revenues grew by 9% while in Australasia and the Pacific, PwC enjoyed another strong year with revenues rising by 10%.
Assurance: Despite very mature and highly competitive markets, revenues from PwC Assurance operations grew by 5% to US$17.4 billion. With 115,000 people across the world, we continue to manage the challenges of mandatory firm rotation in many markets and attract new clients with the introduction of cutting-edge solutions and emerging technologies for the audit. In addition, demand for our broader assurance services continues in established areas such as internal audit, risk and compliance, as well as emerging areas such as data and analytics, crypto currency and blockchain.
Advisory: PwC Advisory operations grew by 10% to US$14.4 billion. We have in recent years established a strong reputation for delivering value for clients from strategy to execution. This is driving high demand, particularly relating to deals, value creation and business transformation. PwC Advisory operations now employ 68,000 people. We engage a broad range of talents, bringing not only the more traditional management or strategy consultants, but also data scientists, AI experts, systems engineers, designers, communications experts and others, to address our clients’ most pressing business issues and opportunities. We also have alliances with many of the world’s leading technology companies to create cutting-edge solutions for clients.
Tax & Legal Services: PwC Tax & Legal revenues grew by 6% to US$10.7 billion, driven by continued complexity and change in many local tax systems, as well as the state of flux in the global regulatory and economic landscape. The 55,000 professionals in our Tax and Legal Services practices use the latest technologies to help businesses navigate complexity and risk, build their people networks, and solve legal challenges while meeting their tax and other responsibilities. Demand was particularly high for People & Organisation services, Legal services, and Tax Reporting & Strategy services.
New world. New skills.
It’s become increasingly apparent that one of the world’s most pressing challenges – and one faced by business – is the growing mismatch between the skills people have and those needed for the digital world. There is an urgent need for organisations, governments and educators to come together to fix this growing problem and business has an important role to play. Over the next four years, we are committing $3bn in upskilling programme ‘New world, New skills’ – primarily in training our people but also in developing and sharing technologies to support clients and communities.
Striving for the highest quality
The quality of our work is at the heart of our organisation and we invest significant and increasing resources in its continuous enhancement across all of our businesses. This investment is targeted into many different areas, including training (technical, ethical and behavioural), methodologies, adding resources in key areas and exploring new ways of delivering our work. As part of our journey to be one of the most cloud enabled organisations in the world, we are investing over US$1 billion in solutions and supporting programmes to create a connected ecosystem and drive innovation and quality. The results of our audit quality testing improved in FY19. We know that we have more to do and we need to reduce the level of non-compliant audits further. In FY19, of the 1,768 audits we reviewed, 94.9% (up from 92.2% in 2018) were deemed compliant.