Has the Big 4 become the Big 3?

Things have changed. You won’t be hearing much about PricewaterhouseCoopers any more.

Is this breaking news? Does this mean that we will be talking about the Big 3 rather than the Big 4?

Should PricewaterhouseCoopers partners and staff be rushing to recruitment consultants to get another job?

There’s no need to panic as all is well with the company. What they have done though is undertaken a rebranding exercise.

The company has commonly been referred to as PwC since it was established via a merger back in 1998 between Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. With effect from Monday though they will now officially go by the name of pwc.

As part of a multi-million pound make over not only will the company be known as pwc but the corporate logo and corporate colours have changed.

The new logo incorporates the letters “pwc” in lower case along with a 6 rectangle symbol in shades of orange and red.

According to pwc, the brand was refreshed “in order to strengthen, and modernise how it represents its worldwide network to its clients, its people and the communities in which it operates.”

Global brand consultants Wolff Olins designed the logo in collaboration with PwC employees and clients. The complete rebranding process reportedly took two years.

From a personal point of view, I like the new logo and orange/red spectrum colours which I think are nice fresh, clean colours.

What about people from some of the other accounting firms? My guess is that they must be relieved. With KPMG having blue/white, Ernst & Young black/yellow and Deloitte navy/green it must have been a relief all round that pwc went for orange/red.