PwC

PwC, short for PricewaterhouseCoopers, is a global professional services network based in London, England. It ranks as the world’s second-largest such network and belongs to the Big Four accounting firms, the others being Deloitte, EY, and KPMG. An English private company limited by guarantee, PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited, oversees the entire network.

As of fiscal year 2024, PwC operates across 149 countries and employs more than 370,000 people. In 2019, 26% of its workforce was located in the Americas, another 26% in Asia, 32% in Western Europe, and 5% in the Middle East and Africa. That same fiscal year, the firm reported global revenues of US$55.4 billion. Its Assurance practice brought in $19.5 billion, Tax and Legal contributed $12.6 billion, and Advisory generated $23.3 billion.

The firm in its current form emerged in 1998 from a merger between Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse, both of which trace their roots to the 19th century. In September 2010, the trading name was shortened to PwC during a rebranding. In April 2025, PwC closed its operations in nine African countries.

PwC has faced numerous corruption controversies and criminal scandals. It has been implicated multiple times in tax fraud and tax avoidance, and regulators have frequently fined the firm for audits that failed to meet professional standards. During the Russo-Ukrainian war, PwC helped Russian oligarchs conceal their wealth and assisted in bypassing global sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

**History**

**Coopers & Lybrand**

William Cooper started an accountancy practice at 13 George Street in London in 1854. Seven years later, when his three brothers joined, it became Cooper Brothers. In 1898, Robert H. Montgomery, William M. Lybrand, Adam A. Ross Jr., and T. Edward Ross founded Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery in the United States. In 1957, Cooper Brothers, Lybrand, Ross Bros & Montgomery, and the Canadian firm McDonald, Currie and Co. agreed to use the name Coopers & Lybrand for international work. By 1973, the member firms in the UK, US, and Canada had all changed their names to Coopers & Lybrand. In 1980, the firm greatly expanded its insolvency expertise by acquiring Cork Gully, a leading UK firm in that field. In 1990, in some countries including the UK, Coopers & Lybrand merged with Deloitte, Haskins & Sells to become Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte; it reverted to Coopers & Lybrand in 1992. The firm left George Street in 1985 for modern offices designed by Dennis Lennon & Partners at Plumtree Court, then moved again in 1994 to offices designed by Terry Farrell at Embankment Place.

**Price Waterhouse**

Accountant Samuel Lowell Price founded a practice at 5 Gresham Street in London in 1849. In 1865, he entered a partnership with William Hopkins Holyland and Edwin Waterhouse at 13 Gresham Street. Holyland left soon after to work alone, and from 1874 the firm was known as Price, Waterhouse & Co. From 1899, it was based at 3 Frederick’s Place in Old Jewry, London. By the late 19th century, Price Waterhouse had become a recognized accounting firm. It opened a New York City office in 1890, and the American practice grew. The original British firm opened a Liverpool office in 1904, then expanded elsewhere in the UK and worldwide, each time forming a separate partnership in each country. This made Price Waterhouse a federation of organically grown collaborating firms rather than the result of an international merger. The firm left Frederick’s Place in 1975 for modern offices at Southwark Towers on London Bridge Street, where the original partnership agreement signed by Price, Holyland, and Waterhouse was displayed. In 1989, Price Waterhouse and Arthur Andersen discussed a merger to gain economies of scale, but negotiations failed due to conflicts of interest—such as Andersen’s strong commercial ties with IBM and Price Waterhouse’s audit of IBM—and the two firms’ very different cultures. Those involved said the partners realized they held different views of business, and the potential merger was abandoned.

**1998 to present**

In 1998, Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand merged to create PricewaterhouseCoopers (with a lowercase “w” and a camel case “C”). At the time, its Management Consulting Services (MCS) division was the largest and fastest-growing part of the firm. The collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and other financial auditing scandals led to Arthur Andersen’s demise, reducing the Big Five to the Big Four and prompting the 2002 Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX). Among other restrictions, SOX severely limited the overlap between management consulting and auditing services. Around July 2000, PwC began preparing for an acquisition or IPO by developing separate financial records for due diligence. Leadership sought buyers, and Hewlett-Packard expressed initial interest for a reported $17 billion, but negotiations broke down in 2000. Nearly a year after Arthur Andersen’s collapse in 2001, its affiliates in Hong Kong and mainland China completed talks to join PricewaterhouseCoopers, China. In 2000, PwC acquired Omnilogic Systems, Canada’s largest SAP consulting partner, to expand its consulting presence there. In May 2002, PwC announced that PwC Consulting would be spun off as an independent entity and filed with the SEC for an initial $1 billion IPO to trade in August. Because PwC accounting partners owned 60% of PwC Consulting, an IPO or acquisition was seen as the next step.