Deloitte plans restructure to cut costs, will likely pare down to 4 business units from 5, says report

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market slowdown, the Financial Times reported. The firm will streamline its primary business divisions from five to four, a source told the paper. These include the audit and assurance, strategy, risk and transactions, technology and transformation, and tax and legal units.

A representative for the company told Bloomberg Deloitte had recently completed a process “to modernise and simplify" its strategy. The prominent accounting firms, commonly known as the Big Four — Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG — have begun scaling back in certain areas due to declining demand from clients, the Bloomberg report added. The surge in demand for their consulting services during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for advice on remote work and supply chain disruptions, is now tapering off due to global economic uncertainty.

This slowdown has affected recruitment and salaries within the accounting firms, it said. In November 2023, the consulting firm said it is set to introduce a practice to help businesses measure the extent of trust regulators, investors, customers and the public place in them to help them identify areas for improvement and raise their trustworthiness among stakeholders. Deloitte added that it is assessing the top 1,000 companies by size in India, including listed ones, based on about 90 parameters to figure out where they stand in terms of stakeholder trust.

The ranking will be privately shared with the companies. It expects there would be takers for the new service given that regulators, customers and investors attach a premium on trust, and businesses going for public offers could use their ranking to help investors decide. A Deloitte study a few years ago covering companies in advanced markets such as the US, found that