Did Ernst & Young get it wrong?

I think that Ernst & Young (EY) are a great company but if I’m honest I think they are missing something.

I know a lot of people that work at EY and overall they seem to be both pretty switched on and very professional but I think they’ve got something seriously wrong.

For several years now there has been a financial crisis in most countries around the world. The term “recession” has been in all the papers and on the TV.

Companies around the world have been cutting back on staff and their sales are down.

But what about EY?

Surely they should also be following suit with a reduction in sales and staff cuts?

Well the impressive news is that they have just released their latest annual results and they appear to have got it completely “wrong”.

Their combined global revenue for the year ended 30 June 2012 grew by nearly 8% to US$ 24.4 billion (personally speaking I always feel that billions look far more impressive when written with all the zeros so US$ 24,400,000,000)

All of their service lines showed good growth (Assurance revenues were up 4.1%, Tax 7.0%, Transactions 9.4% and Advisory 16.2%).

Jim Turley, Global Chairman and CEO of EY said that “we are pleased that our business showed good results, the best since 2008, in the midst of what has been several years of uncertainty.”

In terms of regional growth then the emerging BRIC nations did particularly well with Brazil growing 17.5%, India 19.8%, Africa 10.2%, China 11.8% and the CIS 15.6%.

In the UK the growth was 11% and this was the highest level of growth in 6 years. Over 1,200 new jobs were created by EY in the UK last year and Steve Varley, UK Chairman and Managing Partner of EY appears to be committed to making EY in the UK a diverse and inclusive employer.

He said “Continuing to lead on gender diversity among the Big Four is something I am very passionate about – 28% of our UK leadership team and 18% of our partners are female. I know we can do more and I know we need to move forward so that we focus not just on gender, but also on the ethnic diversity of our people and partners.

So we have been bold, setting an aspirational goal that at least 30% of all our new UK partners are women and at least 10% are BME (black, minority ethnic) by 2015. We’re clearly not there yet and aspirations alone won’t drive change, but we believe diversity and inclusiveness is a business imperative.”

So, in summary there’s a global recession on and yet EY have increased sales in all their service lines, their global revenue has increased by nearly 8%, they’ve recruited significant numbers of people and are committed to a diverse workforce going forward.

Somehow I don’t think that EY have got it wrong…