Accounting firm KPMG is letting go 5% of its American workforce.
The cuts are part of the second round of layoffs at the company, one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, the Financial Times (FT) reported Monday (June 26).
KPMG had conducted a 2% reduction of staff in February, per the report, and said further cuts are needed.
“While our pipeline of opportunities is strong and we continue to win in the marketplace, we are experiencing economic headwinds that are not unique to our business or firm,” KPMG U.S. CEO Paul Knopp wrote in an email to staff, according to the report.
Along with a decrease in the number of workers leaving the company voluntarily, Knopp said, KPMG faces “a significant mismatch between the size of our workforce and the measure of resources that will be needed to deliver services in the coming year.”
PYMNTS has reached out to KPMG for comment but has not yet received a reply.
Other members of the Big Four have also let go of staff this year after a long stretch of rapid hiring, the report said. EY is laying off 5% of its workforce, while Deloitte has cut 1.5% of its staff. McKinsey, meanwhile, has undertaken a restructuring plan that would eliminate the jobs of 2,000 members of its 45,000-person workforce.
Earlier this year, KPMG — the largest bank auditor in the U.S. — came under fire for its work auditing three banks that failed between March and May.
The company was the auditor for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature Bank and First Republic Bank, all of which were taken over by federal regulators.
“It’s a three-fer,” Francine McKenna, a former KPMG auditor who now lectures at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said in May. “It’s a dubious achievement … and we need tough action to back up tough talk from regulators.”
“You can’t expect auditors to know a bank run is coming,” added Kecia Williams Smith, a former auditor and regulator turned assistant professor of accounting at North Carolina A&T State University. “What is fair is to ask about an auditor’s risk assessment and whether they had the right audit procedures.”
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