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Ernst & Young kicks off restructuring

By Mao Lijun (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-23 09:27

Global services firm Ernst & Young kicked off its largest restructuring yesterday, merging its Asia operations in 15 countries including China into a "Far East" region in a move to enhance cooperation, integration and borderless business development.

The Far East region reform is part of Ernst & Young's global restructuring plan, with which it aims to integrate all its 87 country operations into five regions: North America, Europe, Australasia, Far East and Japan.

David Sun Tak-kei, China chairman of Ernst & Young, has been appointed chairman of the Far East region. The new structure will take effect from July 1, with its management board based in Hong Kong and Sun as the managing director.

The Far East management board will supervise, manage and coordinate its 700 partners and 20,000 staff in the Asia region.

To retain its staff and attract accounting talents in the region after the restructuring, Ernst &Young plans to build a Far East training center, which will be located on the Chinese mainland.

"The integration and human resource coordination will greatly improve Ernst & Young's efficiency in China," Sun told China Daily.

"China will be Ernst &Young's dominant market in the Far East region. We will further coordinate and enhance the development of new services and risk management in the country," Sun said.

Industry observers believe the integration will increase Ernst & Young's efficiency and enable it respond to the market faster in the country. For example, for Chinese companies' overseas mergers and acquisitions, Ernst & Young can now easily coordinate its talents in different countries to cooperate on the projects.

As one of the four biggest accounting firms in the world, Ernst & Young has seen rapid development in China in the past few years.

In the last three years, Ernst & Young has doubled the size of all its major businesses including audit, tax, transactions and advisory services in the country. The mainland business has, in fact, posted faster revenue growth than Ernst & Young's global operations.

To support its growth, Ernst & Young has been successful in attracting and retaining talent in 2007. Ernst & Young China currently employs 8,000 people, up 30 percent from 2006.

"With the restructuring, we plan to recruit another 1,500 people for China this year," Sun said.

The firm aims to increase its headcount in the country to 11,000 by 2010.