Big four accounting firm KPMG’s UK unit has informed nearly 600 employees in its audit business that their jobs are at risk, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Impacted employees have been notified that they may face layoffs, contingent to the outcome of a redundancy consultation, according to an internal memo circulated to staff and reviewed by the news agency.
If the proposed redundancy consultation moves forward as planned, the company ultimately expects that as many as 440 employees will exit the business, the report added.
Which positions are at risk?
The planned are primarily targeted at assistant managers who are qualified accountants, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
The proposal is expected to impact approximately 6% of the division’s total workforce of 7,100 employees.
Why is KPMG laying off staff?
Commenting on the development, a spokesperson of KPMG UK said, “Current market conditions mean our attrition rates are very low within certain parts of our audit population, which is why we are proposing to right size those areas.”
“This isn’t a decision we take lightly,” the spokesperson told Bloomberg in a statement.
KPMG is not the only consulting firm that is trimming its workforce. Several rival consulting firms have also turned to layoffs as the industry looks to rein in costs after years of aggressive expansion.
Layoffs in consulting industry
In a separate development, & Co.’s leadership team has discussed the possibility of job cuts with managers in non-client-facing departments, which may impact about 10% of headcount across their business, Bloomberg previously reported. The layoff could amount to a few thousand job cuts that McKinsey would stagger over the next 18 to 24 months.
Another major consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) has also warned earlier this month that partners who fail to adopt and use AI in their work have no future in the company.
Paul Griggs, the chief executive officer of , said that senior staff who were not “paranoid about being AI-first” would probably be replaced by others who were ready to embrace the technology. “I don’t think anyone gets a free pass here. Anyone,” he told the Financial Times.
Consulting is widely viewed as one of the white-collar sectors that experts believe are most exposed to the rise of artificial intelligence, as the technology becomes increasingly capable of handling tasks such as accounting, research and analysing complex business problems.
(With wire inputs)