KPMG (Asia Consulting Practice)

ABOUT THIS COMPANY:

Keep it straight

By global revenue, KPMG is the smallest of accounting's Big Four (trailing Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers), but it has a globe-spanning presence. Organized under a network of independent international member firms, each KPMG member firm forms a separate and distinct legal entity, while KPMG International serves in a coordinating role for the members and doesn’t provide any direct service to clients.

KPMG is grouped into three regional operations: the Americas, the Asia Pacific region, and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). Its member firms provide audit, tax and advisory services in various industry sectors, including financial services, information, communications and entertainment, industrial markets, consumer markets, infrastructure, government and health care, and private equity. The KPMG worldwide network includes member firms in 26 countries and territories in the Asia Pacific region. The firm has seen revenue growing steadily over the past few years. In 2008, total company revenue was US$22.69 billion, an increase of 14.5 percent from 2007.

Meanwhile, the Asia Pacific region has been the fastest growing of the firm’s three geographic groups for a number of years, and KPMG now employs just shy of 30,000 people across the region. In 2008, the firm hired more than 3,000 new employees across the region, an increase of 15 percent from 2007. Revenue for the Asia Pacific region grew 21.6 percent to US$3.11 billion, accounting for 14 percent of overall yearly take for KPMG in 2008. India and China were 2008 stars for the firm—in India, revenue jumped by an impressive 48.9 percent for the year, while revenue in China was up by 25.8 percent. Overall advisory services in the region brought in US$970 million for the year.

What’s in a name?

KPMG is an acronym... but for what, you may ask? The "K" stands for Klynveld, after Piet Klynveld, who founded the accounting firm Klynveld Kraayenhof & Company in Amsterdam in 1917. The "P" is for Peat; William Barclay Peat opened an eponymous accounting firm in London in 1870. The "M" stands for Marwick, after James Marwick, who founded Marwick, Mitchell & Co. with Roger Mitchell in New York in 1897. Finally, the "G" stands for Geordeler, after Dr. Reinhard Goerdeler.

The first president of the International Federation of Accountants, Goerdeler helped bring about the merger that formed Klynveld Main Goerdeler (KMG), itself a product of several previous mergers. The 1987 combination of KMG and Peat Marwick International marked the first megamerger of the modern accounting profession, and formed today's KPMG.

Comeback trail

Like three of the Big Four accounting firms, KPMG was forced to separate its consulting business from the audit and tax practices in 2001, when the U.S. government tightened independence regulations governing audit and consulting firms. The firm signed a non-compete agreement with its consulting spinoff—which was rebranded as BearingPoint Inc. (BearingPoint has since collapsed and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S., in February 2009.)

As the non-compete agreements expired at the end of 2005, KPMG jumped back into the consulting game in full force. By 2006, the advisory practice had already shown impressive growth of 12 percent over the prior year. Risk advisory and financial advisory are keeping consultants busy as new companies make the plunge into the Asian market. The firm also attributes the growth in client demand to private companies in the region that are seeking to expand and raise capital.

Big in Australasia and India

One of KPMG's largest Asia Pacific practices is in Australia, where the firm boasts 4,500 employees across 13 offices. Meanwhile, over in New Zealand, KPMG runs five offices (as well as an office in the Cook Islands) and employs 800 people. Both countries cover six industry groups: consumer markets, energy and natural resources, financial services, industrial markets, government, and information, communication and entertainment. Big-name clients are abundant, with a few including ANZ, Caltex, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Fonterra, HSBC, ING, Nestle, Vodafone and many more.

In India, KPMG's offices in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune serve a client base of over 2,000 companies. The firm got its start in 1993 with just 40 employees, and today has grown to approximately 3,500, focusing primarily on information technology clients and the financial services sector. Pune has been the site of KPMG's most recent expansions in India. Its office there opened in early 2006, with 50 professionals working for multinational and local Indian clients, and in just three years has become the host of India's largest advisory practice group for the firm.