Hi All. I would be interested in the community's perspective and insights on how the big4 plans in rebuilding their advisory arms have been affected in the past few months (total freeze, layoffs, hold on steady). And slightly different perspective, which of them is more serious and committed to grow the advisory market in the mid/long term? Any one, thank you

With the exception of Deloitte, much (but not all) of the Big-4 advisory work is still pretty much aligned with audit work and the spin-off assurance type work that is generated on the back of it. I suspect that the downturn will only increase this amount of work further, pushing them further back to audit and aware from pure consulting/ advisory work. Therefore more work and revenue, but less interesting stuff.Just my two cents.

PwC are growing steadily in pure consulting - and still recruiting at all levels in consultancy especially in Gov and Public Sec. They are serious about beooming a consultancy key player - and advisory area of the business grew 13% last year!

agree with big-4er, most jobs are the spin-off assurance type of work.i am not certain whether PwC really serious about being a consultancy key player, if the definition of consultancy is management consultancy and not risk management, as the partners in advisory are from either audit/assurance/risk management who are more used to using checklists. PwC tends to be more like KPMG, branching another service out from current assurance/risk management. I find EY as a serious player, they are hiring partners and consultants from the consulting industry (despite the fact that they seem to be focusing their consulting business more towards IT and ERP transformation)