March 8, 2022

Four major consulting firms including Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC have announced plans to stop operation in Russia and Belarus.

The move is in sharp criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The action from the consultancy firms will have a major impact on Russia and Belarus. In the region, KPMG has over 4,500 employees, Deloitte has 3,000 employees, EY has 4,700 employees and PwC has 3,700 employees.

KPMG, PwC, and EY are global networks of individual firms that are separate legal entities. The structure is built in this manner in a bid to comply with the law stipulating that audit firms must be locally owned and independent.

Since the companies are locally owned, operations in the region won’t completely close down for the employees.

Instead, it means the consultancy firms will be legally separated from the corporate structures of their respective firms. This will then create separate entities in Russia and Belarus.

While moving away from the region, PwC disclosed that its main focus going forward will be “to help our Ukrainian colleagues and support the humanitarian efforts to aid the people of Ukraine.”

For more information, read the original story in ZDNet.