PricewaterhouseCoopers

Today, PricewaterhouseCoopers brands its consulting activities through the Advisory name. He was named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time team. The selling of this profitable arm of the firm was a result of public pressure on all the Big Four audit firms, as it is seen to be a conflict of interest for an audit firm to be offering non-audit services to clients. In 1973 he led the NBA in scoring and assists, becoming the first (and so far only) player ever to do so. In August 2003, IBM revealed that the actual value of the deal was closer to $3.9 billion. Archibald had a stellar 13 year career in the NBA, most notably with the Kansas City Kings and Boston Celtics. In October 2002 PricewaterhouseCoopers sold PwC Consulting, its professional consulting arm, to IBM for approximately $3.5 billion in cash and stock. Nathaniel "Tiny" Archibald (born September 2, 1948 in New York City) is a former pro basketball player.

These plans were soon revised, however. (See also related article on rebranding.). During 2000, rival firm Arthur Andersen had spun off its consulting activities as Accenture. This unusual branding effort occurred in part as a response to one of the firm's rivals.

According to a June 2002 BBC news article, the firm's CEO, Greg Brenneman described the unusual name as "a real word, concise, recognisable, global and the right fit for a company that works hard to deliver results.". An outside consultancy, Wolf Olins, was hired to create a brand image for the new entity, which was introduced to the public as "Monday". The firm announced in May 2002 that its consulting activities would be spun off as an independent entity. PwC planned to capitalize one these development through either a sale to possible suitors like HP and Microsoft or to spin off the division as a separate company.

During the time of the dotcom era, many smaller consultancies capitalized on the tremendous wealth generated in the equity markets. The Management Consulting Services (MCS) was one of fastest growing and most profitable areas of the consultancy. Though the firm's core business is accountancy, it also ran a huge professional consulting branch, as did other major accountancy firms. PricewaterhouseCoopers had already decided to sell its technology consulting practice to IBM by this point.

This forced many of the Big Four to divest their interests in technology consulting. One such result was the adoption of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which required auditor independence and separation of internal audit from general consulting. The 2002 indictment of Enron and WorldCom and the subsequent collapse of Arthur Andersen resulted in stringent SEC rules on auditor independence. The following year, merger discussions between PwC and Grant Thornton failed.

In 1998, Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand merged to form PricewaterhouseCoopers. Coopers & Lybrand lost a majority of its market share in the 1980s when mergers reduced the Big Eight to the Big Six. In the 1970s, Coopers & Lybrand studied ways to incorporate technology into automating the auditing process. Coopers & Lybrand was essentially an auditing firm.

& Montgomery and the Cooper Brothers. Coopers & Lybrand, the product of a 1957 merger between Lybrand, Ross Bros. The firm benefitted from tough auditing requirements that arose from the Great Depression. Price Waterhouse's offices in the United States were open in the 1890s.

By the late 1800s, Price Waterhouse had gained significant recognition as an accounting firm. A few years later, he took on Edwin Waterhouse as a partner of the firm, leading to the birth of Price Waterhouse. Samuel Price, an accountant, founded the firm in London in 1850. PwC's other large clients include American International Group, The Home Depot, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Tesco and Unilever.

PwC also audits four of the 10 largest companies in the United Kingdom (GlaxoSmithKline, Shell, Barclays and Lloyds TSB Group). As of March 2005, PricewaterhouseCoopers' audit clients included four of the 10 largest public companies in the United States (Exxon Mobil Corporation, Ford Motor Company, ChevronTexaco and IBM). The firm's dominant practice is Assurance, which accounts for over 50% of PwC's revenue. Europe and North America account for about 82% of PwC's annual revenue, with Europe alone accounting for 45%.

According to statistics compiled by the firm from third party sources, PwC ranks in as the number 1 employer of choice among the Big 4 in student recruiting surveys from 12 countries including China, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States [2]. PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of the top 10 companies for working mothers in 2004 according to Working Mother Media. PwC audits 37 per cent of the FTSE 100; 22 per cent of the FT Asia Pacific 100 and 43% per cent of the Fortune 1000. The firm also has in-house human resource services and legal services (through its correspondent global legal firm, Landwell).

PwC's service lines are further divided into Consumer and Industrial Products and Service (CIPS), Financial Services (FS) and Technology, Infocomm and Entertainment (TICE). PricewaterhouseCoopers has three main service lines — Tax, Audit and Assurance and Advisory. DiPiazza Jr, a 45 year old partner of the erstwhile Coopers & Lybrand. The current global CEO is Samuel A.

These 'sister' firms are governed by a global board of partners. The legal structure of a partnership is very different to that of a company, and as such the global firm is in fact a collection of member firms, that are run autonomously in their respective jurisdictions. . PricewaterhouseCoopers is head quartered in New York City, United States.

PwC is one of the Big Four, along with KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, and was formed in 1998 from a merger between Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. There are over 120,000 people employed by the global partnership, in 144 countries around the world, working in four lines of service and 22 industry-specialised practices. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (or PwC) is the largest professional services firm and the 6^th largest private company in the world [1]. Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Big Four auditors.