Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young traces its roots back to 1849 through predecessor companies, but the company’s current form originated in 1989 when Ernst & Whinney merged with Arthur Young & Co. Like Deloitte, Ernst & Young is based in London, but has operations globally. The company is slightly smaller than Deloitte, but is still a massive operation. Ernst & Young is the seventh-largest private company in the U.S. It has about 365,000 employees and generated $45.4 billion in revenue in 2022.
KPMG International
KPMG is headquartered in Amsterdam but is incorporated in the U.K. Its name stands for Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler, the surnames of the founders of the predecessor companies, which date back to 1897 in one case. The current form of the company originated when KMG merged with Peat Marwick in 1987, which was considered to be the first “mega-merger” of large accounting firms. KPMG employs 265,000 people and produced almost $35 billion in revenue in 2022.
PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was formed by the 1998 merger of Price Waterhouse, which has been around since 1849, and Coopers & Lybrand, which was founded in 1854. The third London-based firm of the Big Four, PwC is the second-largest by revenue and the third-largest by employees, with $50.3 billion and 328,000, respectively.
It’s important to note that none of the Big Four are actually a single accounting firm. Technically speaking, they are each a network of many different independently operated firms.