Deloitte reports strong revenue growth as business confidence and risk appetite returns

Deloitte UK reports its financial results for year ended 31 May 2015

• Revenue up 6.4% to £2.71 billion;
• Profit increases by 7% to £593m;
• Growth reported across all five business areas;
• Deloitte publishes gender pay gap data.

Deloitte, the professional services firm, has reported revenue of £2.71bn for the year ended 31 May 2015, a 6.4% increase on the previous year’s revenue of £2.55bn. The firm’s net revenue, after expenses and disbursements, grew by 6.1% to £2.26bn from £2.13bn in 2014.*

David Sproul, senior partner and chief executive of Deloitte, commented: “The past 12 months have been marked by improved economic conditions and stronger business confidence. Whilst we saw some hesitation in the run-up to the General Election, the broad-based increase in appetite from UK plc to invest in growth, productivity and efficiency improvements, governance and risk management and their customer focus has contributed to a positive set of results for our firm.

“The uncertainty which stalked the early years of economic recovery has diminished but not disappeared. Concerns remain over fragility in the Eurozone and turbulence in the Chinese economy, whilst the UK’s position in the EU must be resolved quickly to avoid it becoming a drag on business investment. However, our new financial year has started brightly and we are optimistic that overall, the outlook remains positive for the UK in an evolving global economy.”

Consulting revenue grew by 10.5% to £687m (£622m in 2014), whilst Financial Advisory saw revenue increase by 9% to £462m (£424m). Revenue in the Tax service line increased by 5% to £590m (£562m) and Audit rose by 0.3% to £708m (£706m). The firm’s Swiss practice increased revenue by 13% for the second year in a row to £267m (£236m; or 16% in local currency terms from CHF346m to CHF401m).

Profit distributable to partners for 2015 was £593m, compared to £554m in 2014. The average profit earned by each partner in the year, after providing for pensions and annuities payable to retired partners, was £822,000 compared with £750,000 last year.

Supporting growth and providing trust
Sproul added: “Deloitte’s success is really measured by making an impact that matters on our clients’ success, our people’s careers and the society in which we operate. Through our client work, we encourage investment in the UK and help business improve its growth, productivity and efficiency, whilst underpinning trust and confidence in the capital markets. Our audit practice signed more than 16,000 audit reports and our analytics tool, Spotlight, examined in excess of one billion financial records. This year, we advised the first new UK high street bank in over 100 years on its retail branch strategy, helped develop a new digital quarter in the former Olympic Park in east London and worked with a Premiership rugby club to turn masses of player data into meaningful intelligence.”

“To support this work, we continue to be one of the largest recruiters in the UK. We employed more than 1,500 graduates, school leavers and interns, along with 3,000 experienced hires. We created 700 new jobs at our Centre of Excellence in Cardiff, in turn becoming one of the largest private sector employers in Wales. We have also cemented our commitment to helping young people develop the right skills to aid social mobility. In collaboration with Teach First, more than 1,000 Deloitte volunteers have supported 3,000 students from 14 schools across the UK. Through the Access to Accountancy scheme we have also provided work experience to 141 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in Birmingham and London.”

Deloitte publishes gender pay gap
Gender diversity at leadership levels remains a challenge for many businesses but there is an ever-increasing understanding of the issues that hold women back in the workplace and the ways in which to tackle them. Deloitte supports the Prime Minister’s proposals to require larger companies to publish their gender pay gap and will publish its data next week in the firm’s annual Impact Report.

Sproul said: “Deloitte’s gender pay gap stands at 17.8%, around 1.3% below the national figure. However, when looking across the organisation as a whole the pay gap between male and female employees at each grade is significantly lower, at 1.5%. This illustrates that for Deloitte, the issue is far less about how we pay our people and more about the number of women employed at senior grades.

“We are determined to improve the retention of women within our firm and our representation of women in senior positions. We have an ambition that 25% of our partners will be women by 2020 and in June we announced the promotion of 22 new female partners. We have also taken a number of steps to support these objectives, most recently introducing a return-to-work initiative designed to support women back into employment. We believe that without a representative share of senior female employees average pay will never truly equalise. This is something we are working very hard to resolve.”

End

Notes to editors
*This excludes £113m of revenue generated by the Deloitte CIS member firm, in which Deloitte UK together with a group of other Deloitte member firms has held an ownership interest since 2010. Deloitte UK does not itself operate in the CIS. Due to the introduction of IFRS 10, the CIS entity is now required to be consolidated within the UK firm’s group financial statements for the first time.
Read more and download the financial results.

About Deloitte
In this press release references to Deloitte are references to Deloitte LLP, which is among the country's leading professional services firms.

Deloitte LLP is the United Kingdom member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”), a UK private company limited by guarantee, whose member firms are legally separate and independent entities. Please see www.deloitte.co.uk/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of DTTL and its member firms.

The information contained in this press release is correct at the time of going to press.

Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.