Deloitte CEO in thinly veiled criticism of EY after rival’s split plans thrown into chaos

theguardian.com:

Deloitte’s chief executive has launched a thinly veiled criticism of rival EY after its controversial plans to split the business into two were thrown into turmoil.

EY initially announced plans for a radical breakup of its global operations last year, that would separate its audit and advisory businesses.

It came as the big four accounting giants faced criticism over potential conflicts of interest, given they are meant to challenge audit clients, but sometimes rely on lucrative consulting, tax and deal advisory contracts from the same customers.

But EY’s plans – under the codename Project Everest – were thrown into chaos this week over a dispute with some senior US staff who have been concerned over where its tax experts would sit within the split business.

Rival Deloitte has since taken the opportunity to hail its own strategy.

In a20-minute video posted to Deloitte’s public website on Thursday, Joe Ucuzoglu, the global chief executive, said that while “one of the other big four” had been promoting the idea of separation, his own firm was “not going to be in search of a solution for a problem”.

He said: “History is littered with multiple examples of grand aspirations around these types of transactions that I’m sure sounded great and had pretty slide decks, lots of big promises. It’s easy to get swept up in deal fever but this has actually never once played out as intended.

“We’ve looked at how we go about a separation if we were ever compelled to go down that path. You’d expect us to have done that.”

Deloitte’s leadership has so far decided against splitting the business, however. “It’s not even a close call,” Ucuzoglu said.

Despite concerns over conflicts of interests, he said global regulators were not likely to call for