PwC Wiki

Our PwC Wiki page provides all the information necessary to answer the Question “What does PwC do?” This is especially helpful when you are going into an interview and an interviewer asks you if you know anything about their organization. In this case the organization is PwC LLP.

PwC History

Pricewaterhousecoopers is the second largest accounting firm in the world when ranked by revenue (see revenue details below.) They were the last member of the big 5 accounting firms when they merged to become Pricewaterhousecoopers.

PwC first became PwC in 1998 when Coopers & Lybrand and Pricewaterhouse merged.

The current US chairman is Tim Ryan. He announced his retirement in late 2023. He will retire in June 2024. He was in line to become Global Chairman but did not receive enough support to get promoted.

The Global Chairman Mohamed Kande. Bob Moritz preceded Mohamed as the Global Chair. Bob Moritz preceded Tim Ryan as the US Chairman of the firm.

Tim Ryan is one of the most active US CEOs that PwC has ever had. After the death of a black employee, Tim Ryan worked to combat racism. He still refused to step down himself to allow more diverse people take his spot. He said that the next CEO will most likely be an African-American. He has two candidates from his tax and advisory practice to choose from.

PwC Work From Anywhere

In October 2021, PwC announced that they will let their US employees work from anywhere. PwC has 40,000 employees in the United States that will be potentially impacted by this. They can choose whether to work from the office or work from home.

PwC Logo

PwC’s current logo was created in 2010 as part of a major rebranding. Before that logo they were called PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and there logo reflected that as their old logo was the Pricewaterhousecoopers name with a small pwc at the end. In 2010 they decided to switch to a simple pwc logo with a flare of colors coming off of the letters.

They rebranded to the colorful logo in order to spice things up. The colors of the new logo included bright oranges, yellows and reds. It looks like something out of the 70’s, but it is more modern than their prior logo which was often portrayed in just black.

Prior to the pricewaterhousecoopers logo, PwC was two separate accounting firms – Coopers & Lybrand and PriceWaterhouse. Therefore, they had two separate logos before merging. You can see the Coopers & Lybrand and the PriceWaterhouseCoopers logo above as well. PriceWaterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand merged in 1998.

PwC Full Form

PwC stands for Pricewaterhousecoopers. Pricewaterhousecoopers came from the merger of several accounting firms.

Learn more about the history of the big 4 accounting firms by learning about the big 8 accounting firms. Before there was the big 4 there was the big 8.

2023 PwC REVENUE

PwC’s 2019 Revenue was $53.1 Billion

PwC’s revenue by line of service was as follows:

$18.7  billion – Assurance

$22.6 billion – Advisory

$11.8 billion – Tax

2019 PwC REVENUE

PwC’s 2019 Revenue was $42.4 Billion

PwC’s revenue by line of service was as follows:

$17.4 billion – Assurance

$14.4 billion – Advisory

$10.7 billion – Tax

2018 PwC REVENUE

PwC’s 2018 Revenue was $41.3 Billion

PwC’s revenue by line of service was as follows:

$17.1 billion – Assurance

$13.8 billion – Advisory

$10.4 billion – Tax

2017 PwC REVENUE

PwC’s 2017 Revenue was $37.7 Billion

PwC’s revenue by line of service was as follows:

$16 billion – Assurance

$12.3 billion – Advisory

$9.4 billion – Tax

2016 PwC REVENUE

PwC’s 2016 Revenue was 35.9 billion. Make sure to check out PwC 2016 Revenue page for more details.

PwC’s revenue by line of service was as follows:

$15.280 billion – Assurance

$11.531 billion – Advisory

$9.085 billion – Tax

2015 PwC REVENUE

PwC’s revenues totaled $35.4 billion for their 2015 fiscal year. They achieved this level of revenue by providing services to 418 out of the 500 Fortune 500 companies and 443 out of the FT Global 500 companies.

The 2015 reveneue was made up of:

$11.2 billion from advisory,

$15.2 billion from assurance

and $8.9 billion from tax.

Read more about the big 4 accounting firms revenue here.

PwC Values

PwC has the following values

• Act with integrity
• Make a difference
• Care
• Work together
• Reimagine the Possible

PwC Locations

Go to our Pricewaterhousecoopers locations link to find the PwC office you are looking for. Learn about PwC Offices such as PwC headquarters, PwC India, PwC NY Office, PwC Banagalore, PwC UK and PwC Canada.

PwC has said in an HBR article that they hire about 9,000 employees alone in the United States.

PwC Canada – 7,600 employees

PWC NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES

2017 Number of Employees

PwC had 236,000 employees as of the end of their 2017 fiscal year.

2016 Number of Employees

As of 2016, PwC had 223,648 people working across their global network. Those employees were located in 157 countries in 743 office locations. The breakout by region was as follows:

Asia – 53,010

Australia and Pacific Islands – 7,639

Central and Easter Europe – 9,273

Western Europe – 69,627

Middle East and Africa – 13,036

North America and the Caribbean – 57,773

South and Central America – 13,110

2015 Number of Employees

PwC has 208,109 employees working in its member firms at the end of 2015.

The two regions that had the most employees at the end of 2015 were Western Europe and North America. Western Europe had 65,870 employees while North America had 53,656.

The other regions are as follows:

Asia – 47,090

Australia and Pacific Islands – 7,339

Central and Eastern Europe – 8,432

Western Europe – 65,870

Middle East and Africa – 12,861

North America and the Caribbean – 53,508

South and Central America – 13,009

PWC NUMBER OF PARTNERS

At the end of 2016, PwC had 10,830 PwC partners working across the globe.

 PwC had 10,611 partners as of FY 2015.

PwC had 10,002 partners as of FY 2014.

PwC Scandals

PwC Oscars Scandal – La La Land

In February of 2017, PwC was in La La Land when they were at the 89th Academy Awards. Two of their partners Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz botched their responsibilities at the Oscars.

They were in charge of counting the ballots for the Oscars and handing out the ballots with the winners.

If You remember PwC handed out the wrong envelope for best picture. They awarded the best picture to La La Land. Well they actually didn’t award it themselves. They hand the wrong envelope to the presenters and the presenters got confused, so the presenters announced La La Land as the winners. The presenters in charge of the Oscar flub were Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

The winners in fact should have been the movie Moonlight. The situation was corrected, but not before the damage was done. PwC almost lost their ballot counting job at the Oscars, but PwC leadership begged for the job back and they were allowed to keep it.

PwC Age Discrimination

On April 27, 2016 PwC was sued by an accountant named Steve Rabin. In his lawsuit, Mr. Rabin implied that PwC does not hire people under that age of 40 for entry level jobs such as associate or senior associate.

You can find further information about the PwC age discrimination lawsuit at PwCAgeCase.com.

The lawsuit seeks to require PwC to hire based on merit instead of focusing all of their recruiting efforts solely on young applicants.

This case alleges that PwC provides no mechanism for people outside of college to apply for these low level entry jobs.

PwC Taylor Bean Lawsuit

PwC reached a settlement in a lawsuit brought by the trustee of Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp in August of 2016. Taylor Bean went bankrupt in 2009, so the trustee for the bankruptcy of Taylor Bean decided to sue PwC for $5 billion.

The trustee alleges that PwC missed fraud that was conducted by Taylor Bean’s chairman, Lee Farkas. Now PwC did not audit Taylor Bean, but PwC did audit Colonial Bank. The trustee alleges that their was fraud conducted at Colonial Bank by Taylor Bean’s chairman that should have been caught.

Deloitte settled with the Taylor Bean trustee in 2013 over similar allegations.

PwC Clients

PwC has many clients in the Fortune 500. As previously stated they service 418 out of the 500 Fortune 500 companies. The percentages for some industries are pretty astonishing. They service 100% of the entertainment and media companies in the Fortune 500 through either tax, advisory or assurance services. There are many industries in the 90% range as well such as insurance, technology and transportation & logistics.

Leadership

US Chairman – Tim Ryan

Global Chairman – Bob Moritz

UK Chairman – Kevin Ellis

China Chairman – Raymund Chao

PwC Login

Check out our PwC Login page for links to many of PwC’s login portals such as PwC Career Login, PwC Kcurve, PwC Tax Login among others.

Frequently Asked Questions about PwC

1. What is PwC? – PwC is a professional services firm that primarily focuses in accounting and more specifically the auditing of various companies’ financial statements.
2. How many employees does pwc have? – As stated above, PwC has 208,109 employees as of 2015.
3. Who is the CEO of PwC? – The CEO is currently Bob Moritz. Dennis Nally is the chairman. Bob Moritz is slated to takeover the Chairman’s role.
4. PwC lines of service – PwC has tax, assurance, and advisory lines of service.
5. What does Pricewaterhousecoopers do? – PwC is primarily an audit firm which means they are responsible for auditing the financial statements of various companies. They also offer tax services and consulting services to their clients.
6. Who audits PwC? PwC is audited by the PCAOB. The PCAOB stands for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
7. Does PwC Do Credit Check? Yes PwC does a credit check through their background process.