• The Trump administration is slashing federal spending on consultants.
• Business Insider pored over the DOGE receipts to calculate how many contracts had been cut.
• Deloitte has had at least 127 contracts cut or modified — about twice as many as No. 2 on the list.

Ten major firms are under the spotlight as the Trump administration continues its consulting crackdown — but one is taking the most heat.

At least 127 of Deloitte's government contracts have been cut or modified since January, about double the total for the second-hardest-hit consultancy on the Trump administration's list, a Business Insider analysis of data on the White House DOGE office's website found.

The Big Four firm is one of the federal government's 10 highest-paid consultancies, which have come under scrutiny amid the White House's push to cut waste and improve efficiency. The list includes Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, and General Dynamics.

DOGE estimates the Deloitte cuts will save taxpayers about $371.8 million.

This includes $51.4 million in savings from a contract providing IT services to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $1.1 million in savings from a contract for training on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility that has been running since 2020.

Deloitte US contracts with federal agencies were worth $3.3 billion a year, or almost 10% of its most recent annual revenues, the firm said in a recent earnings report.

Booz Allen Hamilton, which generates almost all of its $11 billion in annual revenue from the public sector, is the second most affected firm on the list, with 61 contracts cut, BI's analysis found.

At least 30 Accenture contracts have been cut, saving $240.2 million, per DOGE's data.

In an annual earnings call last month, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said that DOGE's cost-cutting efforts had already hit the firm's revenues, and staffers have told BI they're worried about layoffs.

The companies did not respond to requests for comment about their government contracts.

The General Services Administration, the government's largest procurement arm, is leading the effort to reevaluate federal consulting spend.

The agency, which operates separately from DOGE, said that consulting contracts with the 10 firms were set to generate more than $65 billion in fees in 2025 and beyond.

In March, the GSA asked the consultancies to submit a scorecard containing a detailed breakdown of their pricing and suggestions for where they could reduce costs.

It told the firms to identify which contracts were "mission critical" and to use simple terms to do it: "A 15-year-old should be able to understand what service you provide and why it is important."

Responses were due by Monday.

A person at the agency told BI that the GSA and federal bodies were now reviewing the scorecards and would decide on further cuts. The goal was to cut waste and move toward a more outcome-based approach instead of open-ended contracts, they said.

CEOs and senior executives at the consultancies appeared aligned with the administration's priorities, the person added.

Here's the list of contracts cut and savings made, according to the DOGE website:

• Deloitte: 127 contracts, $371.8 million.
• Booz Allen Hamilton: 61 contracts, $207.1 million.
• Guidehouse: 49 contracts, $128.7 million.
• Accenture: 30 contracts, $240.2 million.
• General Dynamics: 16 contracts, $202.7 million.
• IBM: 10 contracts, $34.3 million.
• Leidos: seven contracts, $78.5 million.
• CGI Federal: seven contracts, $465,000.

Science Applications International Corp.: five contracts, $7.5 million.

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• The Big Four have been expanding into legal services for roughly fifteen years with varying success.
• KPMG's legal head told BI there's still room for growth but that it has no plans to take on Big Law.
• Stuart Bedford explained why there are some services the Big Four can do better than Big Law.

The Big Four only have a tiny fraction of the legal market — but there's an area they might have an edge.

Stuart Bedford, KPMG's head of legal services, told Business Insider that Big Four firms like his could handle the "enormous scale" integration needed once a merger deal is past the initial finishing line.

"You need that institutional scale to be able to really translate the legal advisory into the world of large global clients seeking to solve problems which cut across many areas of their business and many jurisdictions."

Bedford, who is himself a Big Law veteran, having worked at the Magic Circle firm Linklaters for 20 years, said that Big Law firms are "absolute machines" at mergers and acquisitions and merger control filings because "they are designed and set up for that."

He added he could not think of anyone "outside the Big Four" that can offer "the right amount of investment in the technology, in the global infrastructure, plus the law to be able to really put it all together."

Traditionally consulting and accountancy firms, the Big Four first started pushing into the legal sector in 2010 to operate as "Alternative Legal Services Providers."

While they operate in key markets like the UK, Germany, and Canada, their legal divisions remain smaller by head count and revenue than other business lines. The Big Four represented just 5.6% of the ALSP market in 2023.

But KPMG wants in on this growing market. In North America, the UK, Europe, and Australia, the ALSP market has risen from less than $1 billion in 2015 to an estimated $28.5 billion in 2023, according to a January report by the Thomson Reuters Institute, the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law, and Oxford University's Saïd Business School.

In February, KPMG became the first of the Big Four to break into the US market by obtaining a unique license to practice law in Arizona. This circumvented a rule set by the American Bar Association that allows only licensed lawyers to own or invest in law firms.

Bedford said KPMG is targeting the managed services that follow a $10 million plus global acquisition deal, like changing documentation to fit with new policies or working out what to do with 500 newly redundant subsidiaries.

Bedford said this area "doesn't have dominant players," adding, "There is still a huge amount for us to play for."

He said that the firm's global operating model, unified technology platform, and multi-disciplinary operations make it uniquely placed to support large clients.

"We are just so much more global than even the most global law firm," Bedford told BI.

A 'global law firm'

Of KPMG's three divisions — audit, advisory, and tax & legal services — the latter was the fastest growing last year, up 9.5%. Business from its audit and advisory lines slowed to grow by 6% and 2%, respectively.

Bedford said KPMG Law was still at an early stage in its combined go-to-market strategy, adding that it was working across 80 jurisdictions to forge ties with KPMG's consulting, tax, and cyber teams.

"Servicing large clients at scale globally through the multi-disciplinary approach. That is core to our strategy," he said.

Bedford said the firm, which is the smallest of the Big Four by employee numbers and revenue, "needed the US" market to expand its contract-managed services business.

"It's the most sophisticated and most advanced," Bedford said. "There is just a huge amount of opportunity to shoot for."

Legal experts previously told BI that the Big Four firm's entry into the US market will drive up competition for talent and business but is unlikely to cause disruption in the short term.

"Legal services are hired based on long-term proven track record. Any new entry into the market is going to have to overcome that competitive energy," said Kirsten Keegan Vasquez, vice president of the legal recruiter Major, Lindsey & Africa.

Legal services is also not a story of uninterrupted growth for the Big Four. This March, EY confirmed to Business Insider that it was restructuring its UK Law business and laying off workers in the division.

In Australia, KPMG disbanded its in-house legal division in July 2024.

EY's Australia boss told staff it was planning to reduce its legal operations in the country in February, the Australian Financial Review reported in February 2025. PwC's legal business has also shrunk in Australia, AFR added.

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• EY is shaking things up under new CEO Janet Truncale, merging global regions and business areas.
• The shake-up follows the failure of "Project Everest," an attempt to split its audit and consulting wings.
• The Big Four firm is also trying to recover from a substantial slowdown in its annual growth.

EY's head, Janet Truncale, took over as CEO and global chair last July, promising to foster greater collaboration across the Big Four firm's international network.

Nine months into the role, EY is starting to see some big changes to its business lines and global structure.

An EY spokesperson confirmed to BI that the firm plans to merge its 18 existing geographical regions into 10 superregions.

Financial News first reported the plans.

In another change, EY announced in a press release this week that it is expanding its EY-Parthenon brand to represent the entire EY strategy and transactions service line.

EY-Parthenon, the firm's strategy consulting division, was previously part of the S&T service line and had around 9,000 workers at the start of this year. The newly expanded division now comprises 25,000 employees across 150 countries.

The move is designed to strengthen the full consulting transformation capabilities of the organization, EY said.

Andrea Guerzoni, EY-Parthenon's Global Vice Chair, added that client demand for strategic consulting had evolved amid geopolitical uncertainty and tech-driven transformational change. The expansion would help meet that changing demand, he said.

Last year, the firm's sector strategy also received a shake-up when EY streamlined its core industries from eight to six.

EY's key sectors are now:

• Financial services
• Private Equity
• Government
• Technology, media, and telecommunications
• Energy and industrials
• Consumer and health

During the process, health, science, and wellness were merged with the consumer industry, as were energy and resources, advanced manufacturing, and mobility.

The Big Four firm has laid off some workers as it implements the changes.

Last week, EY confirmed to Business Insider that it was restructuring its UK Law business by "focussing on strategic areas with greater alignment to the broader EY business." The firm said it would continue to strengthen capabilities in corporate law, company secretarial, tax litigation, and immigration but would be laying off workers across other areas of its UK Law division.

Partner numbers in the UK, where the global consulting and accountancy firm is headquartered, declined by 43 in 2024, according to publicly available data reviewed by BI.

The previous year, the firm had added 27 partners to its ranks.

The waves of change at EY come in the wake of the firm's failed bid to split its consulting and audit lines under the previous CEO, Carmine Di Sibio. Codenamed "Project Everest," the bid collapsed in April 2023 amid infighting and opposition from senior US partners.

Truncale took over as EY's global chair and CEO in July 2024.

In her first public statement as global CEO, she launched a new strategy called "All in," which emphasized collaboration and EY's unity as a single global operation — a clear break from the "Project Everest" mission.

"The All in strategy is about shaping EY's next $50b through purposeful growth," Truncale said. The goal was to "build an even stronger organization by creating new ways to collaborate across EY's vast geographical footprint."

Truncale is also tasked with helping EY recover from a dramatic slowdown in growth last year, a trend that also hit PwC and Deloitte amid an industry-wide drop in demand.

In the 2024 financial year, EY's annual revenue growth fell to 3% from 16% the previous year, its poorest performance since 2010. Partner payouts in the UK were down by 5% last year.

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• An SEC filing shows Dell's head count has fallen by 12,000 in the last year and 25,000 in the past two.
• Since February 2023, the tech company's employee numbers have fallen by almost 19%.
• The Texas-based tech company held layoffs in August and rolled out numerous RTO policies in 2024.

Computer maker Dell's staff numbers have fallen by 25,000 in the last two years.

In its latest 10-K filing, published on Tuesday, the company said that it had about 108,000 global employees as of January 31, 2025.

In February 2024, that number was 120,000, marking a 10% annual reduction in the workforce.

Looking back two years, Dell's head count stood at 133,000, meaning that since February 2023, the Texas-based tech company has reduced its workforce by 19%.

The decline in Dell's head count comes after a year of both layoffs and RTO mandates.

In August, the company significantly restructured its sales division, which it told workers was necessary to prepare for "the world of AI." As part of the restructuring, Dell laid off workers, though it did not specify how many.

The company has also carried out a series of RTO mandates throughout 2024, gradually encouraging workers back to the office during the year before finally ordering all who live within 90 minutes of an office to return to their desks five days a week this January.

The RTO mandates have proved unpopular with some Dell employees. When they were asked to classify as either hybrid or remote in February 2024, roughly 50% of Dell's full-time employees in the US opted to stay remote, even though that meant they would forgo promotions to do so. Several employees have told BI that the RTO policies were prompting them to look elsewhere for work.

"Through an ongoing series of actions, we are becoming a leaner company. We are combining teams and prioritizing where we invest across the company," Dell told Business Insider.

Dell's annual revenue was up 8% in its 2024 financial year, but the company's shares have dropped 15% so far in 2025.

According to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, CEO Michael Dell's net worth has fallen by $16.6 billion in 2025 — the second-biggest drop in personal wealth after Elon Musk

Dell notably upheld its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in the SEC filing.

Several leading tech companies, including Meta, Alphabet, and Salesforce, have rolled back their DEI programs and reporting practices amid the wider diversity backlash that has gathered pace since the Trump administration entered office.

"At Dell Technologies, we believe wide-ranging perspectives are powerful," the company said. "We believe that a workforce diverse in experience and background drives innovation and growth."

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• The General Services Administration has asked consulting firms to justify their government contracts.
• 10 companies have been asked to submit a spending breakdown that "a 15-year-old" could understand.
• The GSA told BI it has already cut $4.5 billion worth of consulting contracts under Trump.

The Trump administration has asked 10 of the federal government's highest-paid consulting firms to justify their spending on contracts using language stripped of "gobbledygook" that "a 15-year-old should be able to understand."

In a letter sent to executives at the 10 firms in recent days, the General Services Administration asked the consultancies to provide a detailed breakdown of the spending on contracts from fiscal years 2019 to 2024.

The letter, which Business Insider has seen, says they should then identify waste and spending reduction opportunities.

"We believe it is important to undertake this review in partnership with industry," Josh Gruenbaum, the GSA's Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner, wrote in the letter.

"To that end, we are now seeking your firm's detailed input on spending broken out by agency, project and category of service, as well as the pricing of such services."

Firms were warned not to use any "consultative jargon or gobbledygook" in their responses.

"A 15-year-old should be able to understand what service you provide and why it is important," Gruenbaum said.

The 10 consulting firms on the list are Deloitte, Accenture Federal Services, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics, Leidos, Guidehouse, HII Mission Technologies, Science Applications International, CGI Federal, and IBM. They have until March 31 to respond.

The consultancies have three guidelines to follow: identify waste and savings opportunities; break down spending by agency, contract, and project; and detail and make recommendations on pricing "that would lead to savings for the US taxpayer."

"Scorecards that do not identify waste and spending reductions will not be deemed credible and your firm will be seen as unaligned with the Administration's cost cutting goals," the letter said.

The letter was accompanied by a slide deck template for the firms to use in their responses, which BI has seen. Details that the GSA wants to see include the rationale for any large increases in spend and a list of price reduction opportunities that the consultancies are "prepared to action immediately."

Gruenbaum told BI that the GSA's goal was to serve as "unrelenting fiduciaries to the American people" and deliver "the maximum return on investment for their taxpayer dollars."

"It's what these firms would do when analyzing their own budgets and we welcome them working with us to decrease our excessive government spending while continuing to provide the essential services the government needs," Gruenbaum said.

Federal contract cuts

The Trump administration has already started evaluating its spending on consultants as part of its DOGE-driven agenda to cut costs and boost efficiency.

In late February, the GSA asked federal agencies to provide a similar review of contracts with the same 10 consultancies.

A source at the GSA told BI that it was always the plan to request contract reviews from both agencies and consulting firms. In the letter, the GSA said it would compare the two responses.

Under the Trump administration, the GSA has canceled more than 1,700 contracts, resulting in $4.5 billion in savings, according to internal data the GSA provided to BI.

The GSA source added that the organization recognizes many of the services the consulting firms provide — particularly those relating to national security or involving technical skills — are critical to government operations.

They said that long-standing IT contracts, which DOGE has frequently targeted on social media, were more likely to be seen as an opportunity for the GSA to find value and savings.

Last Thursday, Trump signed an executive order consolidating all IT procurement activities under the GSA. Procurement of other common goods and services will also be centralized into the agency to return it "to its original purpose" as the government's central purchasing arm, a White House directive said.

The 10 firms collectively earn tens of billions of dollars annually from their contracts with the federal government, leaving some federal consulting departments shaken by the pressure to justify their value.

Workers at Deloitte and Accenture's federal advisory divisions previously told BI that there had been a flood of colleagues looking for projects to work on and that they were worried about layoffs.

During Accenture's earnings call last week, CEO Julie Sweet said that DOGE scrutiny had already hit the firm's sales and revenues and slowed procurement of new federal contracts.

"We anticipate ongoing uncertainty as the government's priorities evolve and these assessments unfold," Sweet said.

Some firms on the list have publicly embraced DOGE's agenda.

In an earnings call in February, Thomas Bell, CEO of Leidos Holdings, said that in light of the new administration's priorities, Leidos had developed "fast-paced initiatives in the spirit of DOGE."

"We strongly support the goal of creating a dramatically more efficient and effective federal government that costs taxpayers less money," a Leidos spokesperson told BI.

The nine other firms who received the GSA's letter did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

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• The Big Four are competing to develop the best AI solutions.
• Deloitte and EY just launched into the next phase of competition — AI agents to work alongside employees.
• Agentic AI could reshape consultancies' business model.

The Big Four professional services firms are running their own AI race.

Deloitte, EY, PwC, and KPMG have been investing heavily in automation and AI for several years, competing to build the best solutions for their clients and optimize operations in-house. Innovation by the Big Four, with their hundreds of thousands of employees, sets an example to businesses around the world.

Now, they're onto what tech industry players often call the third wave of AI: agentic AI. It revolves around intelligent systems, or "agents," that can complete tasks or make decisions without human input. Where AI chatbots just respond to questions, AI agents can take action.

Last week, Deloitte and EY announced new agentic AI platforms, both built in collaboration with Nvidia.

Deloitte's platform, Zora AI, provides clients with a selection of "intelligent digital workers" or agents that can perceive, reason, and act to complete tasks autonomously, Deloitte said in a press release.

The platform will act as a "digital workforce to change the way work gets done," Deloitte said.

Deloitte's finance team is already using the platform, and the consulting firm plans to give thousands of employees access to Zora AI by the end of the year.

Zora AI agents will support Deloitte employees with financial tasks, such as expense and invoice management, analysis of sales and performance trends, and the optimization of working capital requirements. The platform will be expanded to support other functions including procurement, sales and marketing, and customer services.

On the same day, EY introduced the EY.ai Agentic Platform, an agentic AI platform that will initially be used by 80,000 workers from the firm's tax division. They'll have access to 150 tax agents who will assist with tasks like data collection, document analysis and review, and income and indirect tax compliance.

'Liberate thousands of hours'

Deloitte and EY touted that agentic AI would be both helpful for workers and transformative in the workplace.

Jason Girzadas, Deloitte's US CEO, said Agentic AI represented the beginning of "the autonomous enterprise era" and would transform work and business models.

The firm said Zora AI would reduce the finance team's costs by 25%, increase productivity by 40%, and "liberate thousands of hours of effort a year."

Raj Sharma, EY's global managing partner for growth and innovation, similarly praised agentic AI's potential in a press release, saying that it is "fundamentally transforming business operations."

Having actionable insights provided by this kind of technology "will impact whether businesses succeed or fall behind," Sharma said.

This combined workforce of tax professionals and AI agents will aim to surpass 3 million tax compliance cases and redefine more than 30 million tax processes in the next year.

EY told BI that prior testing with an EY tax model demonstrated improved answer quality, achieving 86% accuracy compared to a generic model.

Changing the business model

Before achieving the vast transformational potential that proponents promise AI agents will deliver, Big Four firms and other businesses must first work out how to manage the new digital class of workers and how best to integrate new solutions into their business models.

At the World Economic Forum in January, EY's Sharma told BI the power of AI agents is forcing the firm to reconsider its commercial model.

Instead of charging clients based on the hours and resources EY might spend on a project, Sharma said AI agents may call for a "service-as-a-software" approach where clients pay based on outcome.

Deloitte did not respond to BI's questions about how the agents would affect its workforce. In a Wednesday panel at Nvidia's GTC conference about empowering the federal workforce with AI, Deloitte principal Jillian Wanner said the consulting industry as a whole is being "disrupted" amid AI transformations.

"It is no longer acceptable at Deloitte to not take an engineering first mindset," Wanner, who helps lead AI staff development at Deloitte, said. As the industry shifts, Deloitte employees need to act as "technologists and engineers first," and "consultants second."

David Rowlands, KPMG's global head of AI, told BI that the firm is weaving AI agents into the way it delivers services for clients, using them as "innovative digital team-mates working closely with our brilliant people in Audit, Tax and Advisory."

Rowlands said that KPMG is working with its technology partners to create agentic solutions around customer service, quality, insight, reporting, assurance, and efficiency.

"Soon we will be working side-by-side with an agentic workforce that is well-trained, fast, flush with intelligence — IQ and EQ — one that ignores siloes, borders, politics and never sleeps," a KPMG spokesperson added.

PwC is also working to establish how agentic AI fits in with the firm's operations. Umang Paw, PwC UK's chief technology officer, told BI that the focus is on how it can "enhance operational efficiency, transform customer experiences, and drive revenue growth and profitability."

Paw added that PwC advises clients about the "transformative impacts" of agentic AI on their workforce and said that "trust, responsible AI and associated controls are built in from the outset."

Internally, the firm has already built and deployed agents "for data ingestion, investigation and cleansing" and has an "agentic framework for communicating with customers in sophisticated ways," said Bivek Sharma, PwC's chief AI officer.

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• Consulting firm Accenture said that its business has slowed amid DOGE's cost-cutting agenda.
• Accenture stock fell 7% on Thursday following the release of earnings.
• An Accenture Federal Services employee told BI, "You can sense the fear" in the department.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet has warned that DOGE's cost-cutting efforts have started to impact the consulting firm's revenues and slowed procurement of new projects with the federal government.

"The new administration has a clear goal to run the Federal government more efficiently. During this process, many new procurement actions have slowed, which is negatively impacting our sales and revenue," Sweet said in a Q2 earnings call with analysts on Thursday.

Accenture is one of 10 consulting firms whose contracts with the federal government are being assessed amid Elon Musk's DOGE spending-efficiency drive.

Employees told Business Insider this week that the review is causing uncertainty within Accenture Federal Services (AFS), the firm's federal arm.

"You can sense the fear," one told BI.

In February, employees told BI Accenture had announced in a town hall that it would reduce the amount of time employees were allowed between projects, known in the industry as being "on the bench." Workers who did not have a project lined up when their contract concluded would be let go.

This week, two AFS employees who spoke to BI said that since mid-February they had seen an increase in posts on Teams group chats from colleagues looking for projects.

"Every channel is filled with quite a few of these types of messages," said one senior AFS employee.

Some were looking to transfer from federal to the commercial side of Accenture — Accenture LLP — one senior employee said. But the person added that there were few opportunities to do so, and instead people on their team were being let go.

Accenture did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Sweet's comments on the company's earnings call came less than a month after the General Services Administration, the US government's main procurement arm, told federal agencies to justify their contracts with the highest-paid consulting firms contracting with the government and determine which could be cut. The list includes firms like Deloitte, Booz Allen Hamilton, and IBM.

AFS generated 8% of Accenture's $16.7 billion global revenue in Q2, Sweet said on the call.

Accenture's global Q2 revenue rose 5% on the previous year, but shares fell by 7% on Thursday amid the uncertain outlook.

"While we continue to believe our work for federal clients is mission critical, we anticipate ongoing uncertainty as the government's priorities evolve and these assessments unfold," Sweet said.

According to data available on USAspending.gov, 26 new contracts were awarded to Accenture in the first half of this financial year, compared to 51 for the same period in 2024.

Sweet said that Accenture has been driving efficiency in the federal government for decades and could provide commercial solutions to help support the government's agenda.

"We see major opportunities over time for us to help consolidate, modernize, and reinvent the federal government to drive a whole new level of efficiency," she said.

The CEO also highlighted that tariffs and consumer sentiment had led to an "elevated level of what was already significant uncertainty in the global economic and geopolitical environment" compared to the previous quarter.

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• An associate at the Big Law firm Skadden has publicly resigned over her firm's inaction to Trump.
• Trump has targeted major law firms with executive orders, banning their access to government contracts.
• She asked Skadden to sign onto a brief supporting another firm that sued the Trump administration.

An associate from the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP has publicly handed in her resignation notice in response to her firm's actions amid Trump's targeting of Big Law.

On Thursday, Rachel Cohen posted screenshots on LinkedIn of the resignation email she said she sent to her entire firm.

Cohen said the decision of Paul Weiss, another elite law firm, agreeing to drop DEI hiring practices and pledging $40 million in pro bono legal work toward initiatives endorsed by the Trump administration, gave her a new sense of urgency.

"Paul Weiss' decision to cave to the Trump administration on DEI, representation, and staffing has forced my hand," Cohen wrote. "We do not have time. It is now or it is never, and if it is never, I will not continue to work here."

In exchange for the commitments from Paul Weiss, President Donald Trump said he agreed to rescind an executive order issued on March 14 that had revoked the firm's security clearances and threatened its client's government contracts.

Similar executive orders still stand against the law firms Covington & Burling and Perkins Coie.

In each order, Trump accused the firms and specific attorneys of weaponizing the judicial process. Perkins Coie has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, calling the order an "unlawful" attack in a statement.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has also requested information about DEI practices from 20 law firms, including Cohen's firm, Skadden.

"The EEOC is prepared to root out discrimination anywhere it may rear its head, including in our nation's elite law firms," Andrea Lucas, the EEOC's Acting Chair, said.

Cohen said her resignation was conditional on Skadden coming up with a "satisfactory response to the current moment," including signing into a brief supporting Perkins Coie in its lawsuit, refusing to cooperate with the EEOC's request, and committing to diversity programs.

"The firm has been given time and opportunity to do the right thing. Thus far, we have not. This is a moment that demands urgency," she wrote.

In a follow-up comment on LinkedIn an hour after posting the letter, Cohen said she no longer had access to her Skadden work email.

"They owe me a payout for 24 accrued vacation days," she wrote. "Thank you and good night."

In a TikTok post early Friday morning, Cohen said everyone in Big Law realized that Trump was trying to get them to stop working with clients he didn't like. "No one disputes it. I would go to work and bring it up, and people would be like, 'Oh my god, right?' And yet almost no one in the industry has actually been fighting the Trump administration on this."

Cohen wrote in the resignation email that over the past weeks she had tried weeks to get the "firm and broader industry to admit that we are in the throes of early-stage authoritarianism and that we are uniquely positioned to halt it."

She asked her colleagues to sign an open letter from law firm associates condemning Trump's "all-out attack aimed at dismantling rule-of-law norms."

Cohen said she recognized that not everyone was in a position to act as she had, but warned her colleagues: "If you question if it is as bad as you think it is, it is ten times worse."

According to her LinkedIn profile, Cohen graduated from Harvard Law School with a JD in 2022 before joining Skadden's Chicago office in the fall of that year.

Rachel Cohen and a representative for Skadden did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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• Janet Truncale is uncomfortable being known as the first woman to lead a Big Four firm.
• But the EY global chair and CEO is learning to embrace it, she said in a recent interview.
• Truncale said colleagues told her to lean into the moniker to help inspire future female leaders.

In 2024, Janet Truncale became the first woman to lead a Big Four consulting firm.

As global chair and CEO of EY, she is now responsible for leading 400,000 employees and overseeing a global network that brought in over $50 billion last year.

But Truncale is not that comfortable being known as a female trailblazer, she told Kristin Peck, CEO of animal pharma firm Zoetis, in an interview published on Zoetis' YouTube channel.

"When the news came out about a year ago about my election, I remember the headlines really talked about 'first woman to lead a Big Four.' And my first reaction was, 'Oh, why does it say that?'" Truncale said.

Truncale said she felt the same when she became the first woman to lead EY's Americas Financial Services organization, her role before CEO, and tried to downplay the achievement in a meeting with partners.

But "a lot of very strong women" in Truncale's practice at the time told her that she needed to embrace the 'first woman' title.

"It's not about you; it's about us and the next generation, about seeing that it's possible," the women told her, Truncale recounted.

When she became CEO and global chair, those women's voices were in her ear again, she told Peck. "Now I'm learning to embrace it although it's a little uncomfortable for sure."

Truncale, who joined EY as an intern in the 1990s, shared her advice for women who find themselves outnumbered as they move up in their careers.

"That's been the story of my entire career," Truncale said. "I grew up in the audit business, and I would be one of 15. I was always usually the only woman in a boardroom, back in the early nineties."

She told Peck it's important to remind yourself that your background and expertise give you a seat at the table and to mentor and bring others along.

"Whether it's thirty years ago or today, you have something to say," Truncale said. "That's not just for women. That's for men as well."

According to the firm's 2024 DEI report, 48% of EY's US workforce and 36% of US partners are women.

In September 2024, 29% of EY's partners in the UK, where the firm is headquartered, were women. EY UK's target is to double that proportion to 40% female by July 2025.

Unlike Deloitte, KPMG, and Accenture, EY is not reported to have pulled back on DEI programs or transparency reporting since the Trump administration entered office.

Consulting giant Accenture is the only other top professional services firm with a female CEO. Julie Sweet was the first woman appointed to the role in 2019.

• Françoise Bettencourt Meyers was the first woman to hit a $100 billion net worth.
• She inherited a one-third stake in L'Oréal from her mother.
• The 71-year-old is stepping down from the company's board of directors this year after nearly three decades.

Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the 71-year-old granddaughter of L'Oréal founder Eugène Schueller, is leaving the company's board of directors later this year.

Bettencourt Meyers was the first woman to be worth $100 billion but has since seen her wealth fall slightly as the cosmetics company's stock fluctuates. Though she was overtaken by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, Bettencourt Meyers remains the second-richest woman in the world, with an estimated net worth of $82 billion.

Here's a look at Bettencourt Meyers' life and wealth.

Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, 71, is the granddaughter of L'Oréal founder Eugène Schueller.

Schueller, a pharmacist, founded the company that was to become L'Oréal in 1909.

His daughter and Bettencourt Meyers' mother, Liliane, inherited Schueller's fortune and control of the company upon his death in 1957.

Along with her husband, the French politician André Bettencourt, the Bettencourts were well-known in France for their glamorous parties.

But Bettencourt Meyers was less interested in the socialite lifestyle of her parents, preferring to stay in and play the piano or read, Vanity Fair reported.

Bettencourt Meyers has sat on L'Oréal's board and also chairs the family's holding company.

Bettencourt Meyers and her family have a roughly 35% stake in L'Oréal, which owns mass-market brands like Maybelline, Essie, Garnier, and, of course, L'Oréal, as well as high-end beauty companies like Urban Decay, Lancôme, and Kiehl's. L'Oréal also licenses the beauty divisions of luxury fashion houses including Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino.

She has been a director since 1997 and vice chair of the board since 2020.

The company said in February 2025 that Bettencourt Meyers doesn't intend to seek renewal of her tenure as a director once it expires in April.

Jean-Victor Meyers, the oldest of her two sons, will replace her as vice chair of the board.

Bettencourt Meyers also proposed a representative of her family's holding company, Téthys, should join the board of directors. If approved, Alexandre Benais, deputy CEO at Téthys SAS, would take the role.

Bettencourt Meyers is a published author.

The heiress wrote a book on the genealogy of the Greek gods and another with commentary on the Bible.

Bettencourt Meyers said she had a strained relationship with her mother.

Their mother-daughter relationship was strained ever since Bettencourt Meyers was a teenager.

"Françoise was heavy and slow," Bettencourt once said, per Vanity Fair. "Always one lap behind me."

Bettencourt also called Françoise "a cold child" in an interview with a French newspaper, per The New York Times.

Her relationship with her mother came to a tipping point when Bettencourt Meyers initiated a decadelong family feud over her inheritance.

In the lawsuit, Bettencourt Meyers alleged that photographer François-Marie Banier used his friendship with Liliane Bettencourt to manipulate the elderly heiress into giving him some 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) of cash, art, and life insurance policies, The New York Times reported in 2009.

Bettencourt, who was diagnosed with dementia, disputed her daughter's assertion and said she freely shared her assets with Banier. 

In a 2008 letter to Banier, Bettencourt described their relationship to him, writing: "With you, I am like a mother, a lover, all the feelings pass through me. It makes me tremble," according to Vanity Fair.

Bettencourt Meyers told a French news magazine in 2009 that Mr. Banier's "objective is clear: break away my mother from our family to profit from her. I will not let it happen."

The case went to trial in 2015. Bainer was convicted of "abus de faiblesse," or "abuse of weakness."

He was sentenced to two and half years in prison and told to pay Bettencourt 158 million euros in damages.

The jail sentence and payment were later reversed in an appeal.

In 2023, Netflix released a three-part documentary, "The Billionaire, The Butler, and The Boyfriend," about the family drama.

The pair weren't on speaking terms after Bettencourt Meyers filed the criminal complaint in 2009.

"I don't see my daughter anymore and I don't wish to," Bettencourt said in a 2008 interview, according to Vanity Fair. "For me, my daughter has become something inert."

In 2011, Bettencourt was placed under the guardianship of her family due to concerns over her declining mental health. 

The lawsuit also drudged up the controversial past of Bettencourt Meyer's father, André, and her grandfather.

Bettencourt Meyers' grandfather, Eugène Schueller, had publicly commended Adolf Hitler's "dynamism" in the early years of Nazi Germany and was investigated as a Nazi collaborator after World War II ended.

Schueller was also a member of a secret society that plotted to overthrow France's republican government in the 1930s. The group, which was linked to multiple murders and bombings, was bankrolled by Schueller, who hosted its meetings at L'Oréal's headquarters.

André Bettencourt, Bettencourt Meyers' father, wrote antisemitic diatribes for the pro-German press during the war, according to Time, though he switched his allegiances and joined the Resistance. He was later decorated for his military service during World War II and went on to serve in the French government. 

While she was on the winning side of the lawsuit, Bettencourt Meyers was later investigated for allegations of bribing a witness.

The investigation stemmed from a criminal complaint filed by Banier in 2015, according to Vanity Fair. At the time, Bettencourt Meyers said the payment she made to the witness was part severance payment and part personal loan, not a bribe for the testimony.

That suit and Bettencourt Meyers' countersuit against Banier were resolved in a secret plea deal in 2016, Vanity Fair reported.

Bettencourt Meyers inherited tens of billions of dollars when her mother died in 2017, and valuable assets like this mansion in the suburbs of Paris ...

The house is located in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy suburb west of Paris. Neuilly-sur-Seine is known in France as "power suburb, a place not only of wealth but influence," according to The Independent. Over the years, it's been home to actors like Christian Clavier, Thierry Lhermitte, and Gerard Jugnot, and politician Marine Le Pen.

The Art Deco mansion is where Bettencourt spent her final days, Time reported.

... and this mansion overlooking France's Brittany coast.

The mansion was one of Bettencourt's childhood homes, The New York Times reported.

Bettencourt Meyers lived in this nearby home.

French police searched this home in 2010 as a part of the investigations surrounding the Bettencourt affair, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Bettencourt Meyers lived there with her husband Jean-Pierre Meyers.

The couple married in 1984, and Jean-Pierre Meyers is CEO of the Bettencourt Meyers family's holding company.

The couple has two adult sons, Jean-Victor and Nicolas, both of whom are on L'Oréal's board of directors.

In 2023, Bettencourt Meyers became the first woman to reach a $100 billion fortune.

Her fortune has since dropped from the triple-digit billions, though Bettencourt Meyers is still worth around $80 billion, according to Bloomberg, making her the world's second-wealthiest woman and the 18th richest person.

Bettencourt Meyers has dedicated some of her billions to philanthropy.

In April 2019, she was among several French billionaires who pledged millions after the famous Notre Dame Cathedral caught fire.

Bettencourt Meyers is also the president of the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, the charity she and her parents founded in 1987. It issues grants to support research in the life sciences and arts projects, according to its website. 

• Steven Catudal moved to Saudi Arabia for six months to work on a consulting project.
• He said the heat was intense and there were subtle differences between the Dubai and Riyadh offices.
• Catudal noticed a key difference between decision-making in New York and Riyadh.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Steven Catudal, an associate in the people and organizational performance practice at the consulting firm Oliver Wyman. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Growing up, I had always traveled to other countries, so when I saw opportunities to work abroad with Oliver Wyman, I raised my hand.

In my four years at the firm, I had already worked on projects in Brazil, Germany, and Canada. I was interested in the Middle East, so I started networking with partners and managers at my firm in the region.

It took a couple of months, but a project came up in Saudi Arabia. Within two weeks I was on a flight to Riyadh.

The practical side of moving was pretty stress-free. My employer sorted out the visa. My company also had some preferred hotels and apartment buildings, and it was easy to set up a short-term rental.

The work

The biggest difference I noticed compared to working in New York was the diversity of the teams. There were managers and consultants from India, Singapore, Dubai, the UAE, and Russia.

The smartest talent from all around the world is coming to one place.

I worked at both the Dubai and Riyadh OW offices during this time. The Dubai office was definitely more expat-driven and international, but in the Saudi office, they try to staff locally when they can.

A big positive of working in the region is that the projects are grand in scale and impact. While working on the projects in Saudi I felt like we weren't just helping a company grow or make more money, but building something for the future.

I found it interesting and refreshing.

There was buy-in from everyone on the team to ensure projects were successful. A lot of the Saudis who I worked with said that they studied in the US, Canada, and Europe but chose to come back because they wanted to help build the country. The people I worked with had a ton of passion and pride toward Saudi Arabia.

The work was the same intensity of every consulting project. There are tight deadlines, and some weeks, it's a grind to get everything done. On weekends when colleagues had traveled to the region for work, we got our heads down and it could be intense.

There are some projects in the region that are remote, but I was always in the office.

Riyadh is a massive city and is very spread out. I took a cab to and from work, partly to stay in the air conditioning and avoid the heat. In the summer, it's close to 110 degrees. I found the heat challenging, especially trying to stay cool before client meetings.

The lifestyle

It's very easy to travel around the region on the weekends. There are loads of affordable flights — you can find a $100 return deal. I went to Oman, Turkey, Morocco, Cairo, the UAE, Qatar, and Georgia.

Riyadh itself is bustling and energetic. I loved the evening culture once it had cooled down a bit. Even at 11 p.m., thousands of people and kids would be out walking or playing soccer.

There are always new things to do, it was very fun and felt, to me, like safe place to be.

One of the things I enjoyed the most was how friendly the Saudis I met were to me and how welcomed I felt.

Coming to a country where all the signs were in a different language and I couldn't order in restaurants wasn't a problem. People were always pulling out their phones, trying to translate and figure out what I was saying.

It was the same with my colleagues and clients. People were always welcoming me into their home, asking to get meals or giving me recommendations. After work, I was often invited to join in scoccer games or invited to colleagues' houses for dinner. They'd even offer to drive me home rather than take a cab.

One of the toughest things was being away from friends and family and keeping in contact around the time difference.

These consulting projects vary in length, from one or two months to up to a year. While you're away, it can feel like your life is on pause. You miss friends getting engaged or cousins going to college.

Career growth

Working on a project abroad is absolutely worth it. I'll take this experience with me for the rest of my life.

One key difference I noticed in Saudi Arabia was the direct approach that individuals took to ensure that there was consensus among the group.

While working in New York, once a decision had been made, it was assumed everyone agreed and it wasn't questioned. However, while working in Saudi Arabia, there were many times when everyone's input was requested after a decision was made to ensure that everyone was onboard.

Working in such a diverse office culture made me think about how peoples' background impacts how they work and deal with problems.

In the future, if a team is working from one perspective, this kind of experience opens up your mind to say, "Oh, there are so many other ways you can tackle and solve this problem."

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• Partner numbers at PwC's UK division fell sharply last year.
• The firm parted ways with more partners in 2024 than it had in the two previous years combined.
• The Big Four firm has also paused a hiring program for high school leavers.

PwC's UK division closed out 2024 by parting ways with more than 70 partners as the consulting giant worked to weather a slowdown in the sector.

The Big Four firm cut 76 partners from its ranks in a single day on December 31, 2024, according to Business Insider's analysis of publicly available data. The end-of-year departures topped off a year that had already seen a larger than usual number of partners depart.

A total of 124 partners left the firm in 2024, according to records at the UK's Companies House.

In 2023 and 2022 combined, 103 partners left PwC's UK arm. In those two years, it also appointed more partners than it let go, adding 225 to its most senior ranks.

Last year, the firm appointed 69 new partners. Companies House data says it has 987 active partners as of March 13.

The Financial Times first reported on PwC's partner exodus.

PwC, which doesn't provide reasons as to why partners leave the firm, declined to comment.

Partners are the most senior employees at the Big Four consultancies. Those who hold equity ownership in the business traditionally receive a share of annual profits. As market pressures have weighed on the Big Four, partner numbers and their payouts have been falling.

Partners at the UK wings of EY, PwC, and Deloitte all saw their pay fall last year as growth slowed.

The high annual exit numbers come in the same year as Marco Amitrano was appointed to lead the firm's UK and Middle East operations.

Amitrano, who took up the role in July, has launched an overhaul of operations in the UK. This includes creating a stand-alone technology and artificial intelligence unit and merging other parts of the business to create six new teams. He is also seeking to control costs amid an industry downturn.

Growth at PwC's combined UK and Middle East divisions slowed by seven percentage points to 9% in 2024.

From April 2025, it will be facing higher taxes per employee in the UK after the government increased the rate of national insurance contributions — a tax on earnings — that employers must pay.

The firm has recently paused one of its apprenticeship schemes in the UK, from which it typically hires, according to a person familiar with the matter.

BI understands that the "flying start" technology apprenticeship, which had offered opportunities to high school graduates since 2018, is no longer accepting applications.

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• DOGE has turned its focus to the government's contracts with consulting firms.
• Federal agencies have until March 7 to submit reviews of their existing contracts with 10 major firms.
• The government is the main client of several of the firms in the spotlight.

Amid DOGE's cost-cutting efforts, federal agencies have been asked to review and justify their spending on consultants.

With government contracts making up a significant portion of the firms' income, some consultants at Accenture and Deloitte told BI that they are worried the reviews will lead to layoffs.

The General Services Administration, which manages procurement and real estate on behalf of much of the federal government, has asked procurement officials to review their contracts with 10 major consultancies.

They have until Friday to provide the GSA with a list of which contracts they deem essential and those that can be cut.

"As part of the Trump-Vance Administration's efforts to weed out fraud and waste, GSA initially asked agency partners to write a short explanation about why consulting contracts were essential for them to fulfill their statutory purposes," a GSA spokesperson told Business Insider.

"We determined a need for more in-depth responses, and are in the process of collecting additional information at this time," the spokesperson said.

The 10 major consulting firms under review are:

• Deloitte
• Accenture Federal Services
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• General Dynamics
• Leidos
• Guidehouse
• HII Mission Technologies Corp
• Science Applications International Corporation
• CGI Federal
• International Business Machines Corporation

These 10 firms collectively earn tens of billions of dollars annually from their contracts with the federal government. They're hired to assess, advise, and implement solutions to help the government save money over time and become more efficient.

In its latest financial year, Deloitte US earned 9% of its total revenue from government contracts

Others rely even more heavily on federal contracts. Booz Allen Hamilton split from its private sector consulting arm in 2008 and now generates almost all of its $11 billion in annual revenue from the public sector.

Leidos Holdings, which provides national security and technology services such as scanners at airport checkpoints, said in January that it made about 87% of its total revenue from US government contracts last year.

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• The US government spends billions on consulting contracts, making them a prime target for DOGE.
• Employees at Deloitte and Accenture told BI they were anxious about job cuts amid contract reviews.
• Although the reviews would cause disruption, they also offered opportunities, a Deloitte leader said.

The Trump White House's DOGE office has been shaking up the public sector in its mission to slash spending and improve efficiencies — a job that's usually left to consulting firms.

After laying off federal workers and claiming to have cut billions in spending, DOGE is now turning its attention to the consultants themselves.

The General Services Administration, or GSA, the US government's main procurement arm, has told federal agencies to review and justify their contracts with 10 major consultancies.

They have until Friday to provide the GSA with a list of which contracts they deem essential and those that can be cut.

"As part of the Trump-Vance Administration's efforts to weed out fraud and waste, GSA initially asked agency partners to write a short explanation about why consulting contracts were essential for them to fulfill their statutory purposes," a GSA spokesperson told Business Insider.

Business Insider understands the 10 firms on the list are Deloitte, Accenture Federal Services, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics, Leidos, Guidehouse, Hill Mission Technologies, Science Applications International, CGI Federal, and IBM.

The federal government spends tens of billions annually on consulting services and is the largest client for many of the firms included on the list.

Deloitte US receives $3.2 billion annually through its contracts with federal agencies, or about 9.6% of its latest annual revenue. Booz Allen Hamilton makes almost all of its $10.7 billion in revenue from government contracts.

Finding themselves in the DOGE hot seat, federal consulting departments are bracing for disruption, employees at Accenture and Deloitte told BI.

They asked not to be identified as they were not permitted to speak to the media. BI has verified their employment.

One consultant for Accenture Federal Services said: "Everyone is worried that their job will be next, and nobody knows when it's going to end. We already have fewer projects and expect more to get cut."

Three AFS employees told BI that in February Accenture reduced the amount of time employees are allowed between projects, known in the industry as being "on the bench."

During a February town hall, they were informed that unstaffed, training, or recruiting time between projects would be eliminated. Previously, they were given a maximum buffer zone of four weeks between projects before they would face termination, the employees said. Under the new policy, employees who do not have an immediate project lined up will be let go.

"Simply, you are either on a project or out," one of the AFS employees told BI.

They were told the hard stance on billing internally would continue until the Trump administration is "on more stable ground," one AFS employee said.

Workers within Deloitte's Government & Public Services (GPS) division told BI that the Big Four firm had not made any overt policy changes in reaction to federal contracts being under review. However, one employee described the atmosphere as "stressful" and said that projects were getting pulled, creating a very large bench.

"There really isn't a lot of work available to apply for," the GPS worker said, adding that they thought it was best to leave government consulting and return in a few years "when things have settled."

Accenture and Deloitte did not respond to requests for comment.

Opportunity for consultancies

DOGE's scrutiny over firms' contracts comes down to how much value consultants are bringing to federal operations.

"No more paying consultants to do things like make PowerPoint slides and write meeting minutes!" Doug Collins, Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs, said on X last month as he announced he'd be cutting contracts worth about $2 billion.

Michael Mische, a management consultant, former partner at KPMG, and professor at USC's Marshall School, said consultants play a valuable role in government operations, but it was hard to calculate the exact return on their services.

"How do you calculate the return on a strategy? Or how do you really calculate the return on organizational change?" he said.

He added that it was "an absolutely correct criticism" that consultants work with urgency but not efficiency and that the industry was "due for disruption."

'Good value'

BI spoke to a senior leader in Deloitte's GPS division who defended the firm's work.

"We're constantly striving to bring good value and show value because that's how we then win additional work," the senior leader said.

The leader understood the notion that there was inefficiency or bloat in federal spending and argued that consultants brought greater efficiency to the government.

"We're consistently showing, we implemented this new tool — it saved you 5,000 hours this year — or we identified X amount in cost or over burns or fees or whatever it is."

The Deloitte leader said the value came from bringing industry and technology expertise that the government didn't always have.

Both Mische and the Deloitte GPS leader thought that the contract reviews wouldn't necessarily lead to a significant loss of business for consultancies but rather a shift in the focus of work.

The Deloitte leader said departments such as climate and transportation have reason to feel uneasy, but those in data and AI "might feel very bullish that things are going to pick up" given the Trump administration's focus on automation and AI.

He thought there would also be a temporary rise in opportunity thanks to consultants having to step in as "Band-Aids" in place of federal employees who had been let go.

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• Arizona's Supreme Court has granted KPMG a license to practice law.
• The decision marks the entry of a Big Four firm into the US legal framework.
• The move is likely to create more competition for top talent and clients, one commentator said.

KPMG will become the first of the Big Four to set up a legal division in the US after the Arizona Supreme Court granted it a special license to practice law.

KPMG was approved to operate as an alternative business structure, or ABS, in Arizona — a license that enables it to establish KPMG Law US as an independent law firm.

The new entity will bring together technology and legal advice at scale, reshaping the market for legal services, KPMG said in a statement.

Its offerings will include legal managed services, legal operations consulting, and legal technology innovation.

"KPMG Law US is uniquely positioned to transform the delivery of legal services," said Rema Serafi, KPMG's vice chair of tax. "By combining cutting-edge artificial intelligence and advanced technology solutions with legal services, we are proud to be a first mover with this capability and to offer the most holistic range of tech-enabled services in the marketplace for our clients' evolving needs."

The US is the world's largest market for legal services. It is mostly closed off to nonlegal professionals by an American Bar Association rule that only permits licensed lawyers to own or invest in law firms.

While the Big Four have set up legal divisions in other key markets, they have only operated advisory, audit, and tax divisions in the US until now.

Arizona's ABS program sidesteps the rule and grants nonlegal professionals a license to provide legal services. More than 100 firms have been approved to practice law in the state since the ABS program began in 2021.

Arizona is not alone in offering market access to non-legal professionals. Washington has allowed limited nonlawyer ownership since 1991, and Utah is running a similar trial to the ABS program.

'Market-based reforms'

Lucy Ricca, executive director at Stanford Law School's Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession, told Business Insider that Arizona's ABS reforms were intended to widen the public's access to legal services.

"The Arizona ABS reforms are market-based reforms, intended to open the power of capital, diversification, and competition in a sector, legal services, that has been stunted by the professional monopoly of lawyers," she said.

Critics of the program argue that nonlawyer ownership in law firms creates a conflict of interest and undermines the professional independence of lawyers.

KPMG Law US will operate within each state's ethics rules in line with every other law firm, the firm said.

As a condition of its ABS license, KPMG will not be allowed to provide legal services to clients for which it also performs financial audits, the Arizona Supreme Court said in a statement.

More competition

The Arizona court's decision signals further expansion for KPMG's tax and legal division, which was the fastest-growing arm of its business in its last financial year — up 10% globally.

KPMG Law US will not be limited to Arizona. It will also serve clients across the US by partnering, offering co-counsel, or referring to separate staffing firms and other law firms, subject to state rules.

Kirsten Keegan Vasquez, vice president of the legal recruiter Major, Lindsey & Africa, told BI that she doesn't expect KPMG to swiftly disrupt the market.

"Legal services are hired based on long-term proven track record. Any new entry into the market is going to have to overcome that competitive energy," she said.

However, Vasquez expected KPMG's move to create more competition for top talent and clients among big law firms.

Stanford's Lucy Ricca added: "There certainly will be winners and losers as the market grows and changes, but those pressures already exist in many ways.

"Every new entrant represents a growing and more dynamic market for legal services and a growing diversity in the supply of legal services. It means more competition, yes, but this is a market that has been stunted by a lack of real competition for decades."

• Supermicro filed annual financial reports late after an accounting dispute with ex-auditor EY.
• EY dropped Supermicro as a client after raising concerns about its internal financial governance.
• Supermicro said that after it replaced EY with another accounting firm, no issues were found.

Supermicro, the AI server manufacturer and Nvidia partner, has met the deadline for a late filing of its annual financial reports, and is blaming its former auditor EY for the delay.

The tech company, which does business as Supermicro, filed its overdue 10-K annual filing for fiscal 2024 and the first two quarterly reports for fiscal 2025 on Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filings came months late, putting Supermicro at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq 100 for failing to meet compliance requirements. The company was granted an extension by Nasdaq in December.

"The Company is now current with its SEC financial reporting obligations," Supermicro said in a press release.

In an explanatory note included in the filing, Supermicro blamed its previous auditor, EY, for the delay, saying that the reports were late "due to EY's stated concerns and subsequent resignation."

According to the filing, the Big Four firm dropped Supermicro as a client in October 2024 after raising concerns to the board in July about the governance and transparency of the company's financial reporting and the integrity of its senior management.

In August 2024, Hindenburg Research, a now-defunct US short-seller, said it found "glaring accounting red flags" in Supermicro's financial practices. Hindenburg's report cited "evidence of undisclosed related party transactions, sanctions and export control failures, and customer issues."

"We disagreed with EY's decision to resign as our independent registered public accounting firm for a number of reasons," Supermicro said in the filing.

Its reasons included that a number of audit procedures were left incomplete when EY stepped down and that a special committee set up to investigate concerns was still conducting its review.

The server manufacturer also addressed the Hindenburg report in the filing. Supermicro denied any wrongdoing and said that the report "contained false or inaccurate statements about us, including misleading presentations of information we previously shared publicly."

Supermicro, which has a market capitalization of just over $30 billion, appointed BDO, a Belgian-headquartered firm, as its new accountant in November.

BDO found that the financial statements "present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company," according to the filings.

The special committee's review "did not give rise to any substantial concerns about the integrity of our senior management or the Audit Committee, or their commitment to ensuring that our financial statements are materially accurate," Supermicro said in the SEC filing.

EY declined to comment.

Charles Liang, founder, president, and CEO of Supermicro, called Tuesday's filings "an important milestone" for the company.

Supermicro's stock soared by more than 12% on Wednesday after it made the filing and regained compliance with Nasdaq's listing requirements.

Supermicro was an early launch partner for Nvidia, AMD, and Intel for CPUs and GPU accelerators and has since ridden the wave of AI hype to success.

The server manufacturer has seen its share price explode over recent years, climbing more than 1,000% since the start of 2022.

Supermicro's shares are up 67% to date this year. The filings show that sales more than doubled from $7.12 billion to $14.9 billion in 2024.

• Demand for consulting firms has been down in key markets like the US and UK.
• However, the advisory business is booming in Gulf states thanks to national development projects.
• Working on major national projects is giving consultants "unique" influence in the region, experts told BI.

Recent years have been tough for the consulting business. Growth has plummeted in some key markets, and the challenging economic climate has led to layoffs and restructuring at major firms. But one region is proving to be a consulting bright spot.

International consultancies are finding success in the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC — a political and economic bloc that includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman.

According to Source Global, a UK-based research firm that tracks the consulting industry, the GCC consulting market grew 13.2% in 2023.

Source Global's research found that in the more mature US and British markets, growth in 2023 slowed to 5.2% and 4.7%, respectively. In previous years, growth in both countries had been in double digits.

Dane Albertelli, a senior analyst at Source Global, told Business Insider that the scale of growth in the GCC advisory market is "unprecedented" and that it has become "the place for opportunity and the place where these companies can make a lot of money."

Albertelli said that data for 2024 has yet to be finalized but that the GCC market was expected to have accelerated by more than 15%.

A 'cascade' of opportunities

Opportunities for consultants in the GCC started with the UAE roughly 20 years ago, when its government poured resources into plans to diversify its economy away from oil.

Heavy investment in tourism, aviation, real estate, and financial services led to the need for planning and technical expertise. Consulting firms started to pour money and resources into meeting the needs of the Emirati government, and "it's just been a cascade from there," Albertelli said.

The scale of Western consulting firms' presence in Gulf nations is apparent in the volume of offices they have in the region. All of the Big Four — Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG — have 10 or more offices in GCC countries, while McKinsey has eight, BCG has six, and Accenture has four. The UAE is a particular hot spot, with Deloitte having nine offices in the country.

Saudi Arabia has been leading the drive in recent years with its Vision 2030 strategy, a $1 trillion project to reduce reliance on oil revenues and boost the country's standing on the global stage.

The centerpiece of Vision 2030 is Neom, an ambitious megacity and tourism hot spot being built in the country's northern deserts. But Saudi Arabia is also planning to construct a whole new district in Riyadh, preparing to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games and the 2034 FIFA World Cup, and aiming to become a "national champion" in AI.

Dubai is now a tourism and expat hot spot, and the UAE's economy is booming. But the drive for growth and the need for consultants hasn't stopped — the current push is toward healthcare innovation with the aim of becoming a medical tourism hub.

Similar tourism, sport, technology, and infrastructure initiatives are underway in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman.

"That naturally translates into an awful lot of advisory work," Albertelli said. International consultants are being called in to design and implement projects ranging from transportation networks and city construction to education reform and public sector tech systems.

Such projects have not been without controversy. Saudi Arabia has been accused of human rights abuses against local tribespeople living close to the site of Neom, while hundreds of migrant workers were acknowledged to have died in Qatar in the lead-up to the 2022 World Cup.

Albertelli said that while they spend to diversify away from reliance on petrochemical dollars, the Gulf nations' backlog of oil funds has ensured that the advisory sector avoids the macroeconomic tension that has hit the European and US advisory markets.

Barring any massive geopolitical tension, opportunities aren't going anywhere, Albertelli said. He expects the rate of growth to continue for several years and says the main change to the market will be that, as infrastructure gets built, the work will shift from strategy to operations advice.

From the pull factor of little to no income tax to the recent opening up of society, the region has plenty to attract consultants besides a steady stream of projects.

"If you don't mind a bit of sun, it's probably the best place to go for your career," Albertelli said.

A unique market

The GCC consulting market is unique in that most firms' clients are national governments rather than private companies, giving international firms a significant role in shaping the public sector.

"The degree of access and influence that consultancies have over policymaking is far more extensive than what you see in most other regions," Dawud Ansari, President of the Majan Council, an Omani think tank focused on development in the Gulf region, told BI. "They don't just refine policies or draft reports — they design entire national visions and, in some cases, effectively take over the steering wheel of major policy initiatives."

"Most Gulf states have a limited number of national think tanks and independent expertise, meaning that when a decision needs to be made, the instinct is usually to bring in an external, mostly foreign, consultant," al-Ansari told BI.

"They come from a completely different cultural and institutional background, which inevitably affects how they operate and how aligned their recommendations are with local realities."

Al-Ansari said that the continued reliance on external expertise for policymaking could erode public trust and restrict nationals from developing career paths in public policy.

As the market continues to grow, a rising number of local boutique advisory firms are being created. The Saudi government's "Saudization" policy — which enforces a quota system on high-value industries — is also resulting in more nationals entering the offices of international consultancies.

Albertelli told BI that most Gulf states are focused on the outcomes and care about the brand rather than the nationality of consultants.

"All the big countries in the GCC want the best talent and they're willing to spend no matter where it's from. Obviously, these are all big Western companies, but I think they realize that, particularly with the Big Four, they're massive international firms," he said.

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• KPMG US joined other Big Four firms in pulling back on DEI initiatives, per an internal memo seen by BI.
• Its US arm is ending a strategy intended to recruit and retain staff from underrepresented backgrounds.
• Paul Knopp, chair and CEO of KPMG US, told staff it remained "unwavering" in its commitment to inclusivity.

KPMG US has ended a DEI talent strategy that was set up amid the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, becoming the latest Big Four professional services firm to roll back diversity initiatives since Donald Trump's reelection.

"The legal landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts has been shifting, via executive orders and in the courts," Paul Knopp, chair and CEO of KPMG US, told US partners and employees in a memo sent on February 14 and seen by Business Insider.

Knopp said that KPMG US would bring its "Accelerate 2025" program to a close and reevaluate "associated programming and talent initiatives."

A person familiar with the matter said the firm would end its use of forward-looking metric-based aspirations based on protected categories such as race or gender.

KPMG has also removed annual DEI transparency reports that tracked progress on diversity from its website. A person familiar with the matter said the firm was making sure that the website accurately reflected current policies and programs.

The changes were first reported by The Financial Times.

Knopp told the US workforce that the firm remained "unwavering in our commitment to fairness and inclusivity."

Launched in 2020, KPMG's Accelerate 2025 strategy aimed to boost diversity in recruitment and retention. The aim was to help the firm reach a target of having 50% of managing partners and managing directors from underrepresented backgrounds by 2025.

KPMG's financial year, and the point at which it measures earnings and progress data, ends on September 30.

Knopp presented the strategy in a LinkedIn post published on Juneteenth in 2020, saying that Accelerate 2025 would help ensure "the firm and the firm's leaders look a lot more like America."

"We also commit to publishing relevant information so that our people and the public can hold our feet to the fire," he said.

A report that remains available on KPMG's website states that in September 2023, 45.3% of US partners and managing directors came from under-represented groups such as women, racial minorities, and LGBTQ+ individuals.

In January 2024, Knopp told Quartz that "24% of our partners are women. Only a little more than 2% are Black. We're not at the same level of representation in the country for Black and Latino/Latina Americans — we're not even close."

KPMG declined to comment.

KPMG joins a growing list of major companies, many of whom expanded diversity initiatives following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, that are now rolling back on DEI in line with changes introduced by the Trump administration.

On his first day in office, the president signed an executive order to end diversity programs across the federal government and ordered all federal DEI staffers to be placed on leave while their departments were disbanded.

Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, instructed the Department of Justice to "investigate, eliminate, and penalize" any "illegal" DEI programs at private sector companies and universities that receive federal funds.

"We will continue to uphold the highest ethical standards and fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including adherence to the executive orders affecting us as a federal contractor," Knopp said in the memo.

KPMG receives $406 million annually through its contracts with federal agencies, over half of which are with the Department of Defense.

A KPMG US employee, who did not want to be named as they were not permitted to speak to the media, said that Knopp's memo "hasn't really been a point of frustration."

"They've done a really good job of hosting Q&As and trying to reassure people who think this is going to not be inclusive anymore," the person said.

Fellow Big Four competitor Deloitte has also scrapped DEI programs, telling staff in an internal memo that the changes were made "to remain fully compliant with federal laws."

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• Many big companies are pulling workers back to the office 5 days a week.
• The Big Four — EY, Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG — are sticking with hybrid work policies.
• Here's where the Big Four stand on hybrid work in 2025.

The world's four largest consulting and accounting firms collectively employ 1.5 million staff and take up prime commercial real estate in hundreds of major cities worldwide.

But all four firms are bucking the trend toward stricter return-to-office (RTO) policies being followed by other corporate powerhouses.

Companies including JPMorgan, Dell, AT&T, and Amazon have reversed their stance on remote work and called employees back to the office five days a week.

Federal workers have also been called to return to their offices full-time after President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating RTO on his first day in the White House.

Business Insider spoke to the Big Four about where they stand on hybrid work in 2025.

KPMG

KPMG operates a hybrid working model, with employees splitting time between the office, client sites, and home. The firm has permitted some hybrid work since before the pandemic.

The exact number of days teams come to the office is at the discretion of each member firm within the KPMG network.

"This approach centers on trusting our people to responsibly manage their working patterns to deliver the best results for clients, as well as their teams," Nhlamu Dlomu, KPMG's international global head of people, told Business Insider.

Some 81% of participants in KPMG's 2024 Global People Survey agreed with the statement, "I can work where I am most effective to meet client, business, and team needs."

KPMG says it continually assesses working practices to find the right balance between flexibility and building strong in-person relationships at work. It says it aims to hold regular team-building and social activities to support a healthy work environment.

"There's no doubt that one size does not fit all when it comes to ways of working — different organizations will have different approaches," said Dlomu.

"But, it's important for organizations to reflect on what they have gained from remote and hybrid work and what they may risk by introducing blanket mandates."

EY

EY's hybrid work policy encourages staff to work in the office two to three days a week, with the flexibility to work from home for the remaining days.

There is no single global policy on how often employees should come to the office. The number of days is at the discretion of member firms in each region.

"Globally our principle is that people work where and when they are most effective, with individual office policies set by member firms," an EY spokesperson told BI.

In January 2024, reports emerged that senior employees at the UK branch of EY were monitoring how often staff attended its offices by tracking turnstile access data. Reports at the time suggested that at least 50% of staff on some teams were flouting the two-day-a-week rule.

EY's spokesperson told BI it recognized the importance of flexibility in enabling productivity, collaboration and meeting client needs. EY believed it is important to develop "a network of workplaces, including offices, home working, coworking and meeting client preferences and policies," they said.

They added that EY continuously assesses workforce preferences to evolve its approach and create the best work experience.

PwC

PwC's policy allows hybrid employees to spend roughly 50% of their time in-person at either a client site, PwC office, or other in-person location, depending on their team and client.

The firm's UK arm has cracked down on hybrid working in recent months, however.

In January 2025, PwC tightened up its hybrid work approach in the UK by mandating staff work in the office or with clients at least 3 days a week, or 60% of their time. Previously, the UK workforce was expected in the office at least two days a week.

The firm told its 26,000 UK employees that it will also begin monitoring how often employees work from home, The Financial Times reported.

"Face-to-face working is hugely important to a people business like ours, and the new policy tips the balance of our working week into being located alongside clients and colleagues," said Laura Hinton, managing partner at PwC UK.

"At the same time, we continue to offer flexibility through hybrid working," she said.

PwC's policy in the US remains unchanged.

Deloitte

The golden rule at Deloitte is that "people are trusted to decide how they work," the firm states on its website.

Deloitte, which is the largest of the Big Four by both employees and revenue, has allowed some hybrid work since 2014. The firm made its hybrid-working policy official following lockdowns during the pandemic.

Deloitte does not mandate a set number of days in the office. Instead, the consultancy lets employees judge when to spend time between client sites, the office, and home.

When teams or clients require their presence, employees are encouraged to make every effort to be present in person.

Deloitte believes hybrid work is a tool for boosting employee experience and satisfaction, BI understands. The firm thinks employers who recognize the desire for flexibility and choice are more likely to attract, retain, and motivate the best talent.

Do you work at KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, or EY? Contact this reporter in confidence at pthompson@businessinsider.com or on Signal at Polly_Thompson.89 with any tips. You can remain anonymous.

• Deloitte US has made a series of changes to its DEI practices, according to internal memos seen by BI.
• The moves include telling staff working on government contracts to remove pronouns from email signatures.
• Deloitte's UK chief told staff that the firm remained "committed" to diversity goals in the UK.

Deloitte has told some staff to remove pronouns from their email signatures.

The move by the world's largest professional services firm comes amid a pullback on its diversity programs in the US that is not being followed by the UK division.

"We will sunset our workforce and business aspirational diversity goals, our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Transparency report, and our DEI programming," Doug Beaudoin, Deloitte's chief people officer, told employees in an email sent on Monday and seen by Business Insider.

He wrote that the changes followed "a detailed review of all pertinent government directives to ensure we comply with their requirements, both as a private enterprise and as a government contractor." That review was in line with "others in the marketplace."

"Everyone is welcome at Deloitte," Beaudoin emphasized in bold text in the email.

The memo comes a week after Deloitte asked workers in its Government & Public Services division, which serves the public sector, to remove pronouns from their email signatures.

In a February 5 memo seen by BI, staff in that division were told to update their email signature template "to align with emerging government client practices and requirements."

"Please note that the template is limited to name, role information, and business contact information. Any other personal information, including quotes, taglines or pronouns, should not be included," the directive said.

Government & Public Services workers have a "longstanding commitment to compliance with US government requirements," the memo said.

The memo about the email signatures was first reported by The Financial Times.

While the changes to DEI programs apply to Deloitte's 173,000 US employees, its UK operation remained "committed" to diversity goals and would continue to report annually on its progress on inclusion.

The comments were made in a memo sent on Tuesday by Richard Houston, senior partner and chief executive of Deloitte UK, and seen by BI. Houston said he was sending the memo in response to media coverage of the US DEI changes.

"Events in the external landscape do not change our commitment to building an inclusive culture and helping all our people to reach their full potential," he wrote.

Addressing Deloitte US's changes on DEI, Houston told the UK workforce that leaders had "been clear that this reflects the need to remain fully compliant with federal laws."

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end diversity programs across the federal government and ordered all federal DEI staffers to be placed on leave while their departments are disbanded.

Last week, Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, instructed the Department of Justice to "investigate, eliminate, and penalize" any "illegal" DEI programs at private sector companies and universities that receive federal funds.

Deloitte receives $3.2 billion annually through its contracts with federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services.

A Deloitte employee in the GPS division, who did not want to be named as they were not permitted to speak to the media, told BI the email signature request was made to "minimize potential risk exposure" and "maintain goodwill" with the White House.

"Deloitte is taking the 'better to be safe, than sorry' approach here," the person said.

Deloitte has already clashed with the MAGA movement after one of its employees was revealed to have leaked messages sent by now-Vice President JD Vance in 2020 that were highly critical of Trump to The Washington Post.

In September 2024, Donald Trump Jr. posted the name of the Deloitte executive accused of leaking messages on X.

"Deloitte also gets $2B in govt contracts. Maybe it's time for the GOP to end Deloitte's taxpayer funded gravy train?" the president's son said.

The Big Four firm joins a growing list of companies, including Meta, Walmart, and Target, that have rolled back their DEI policies in recent months.

Last week, fellow consulting giant Accenture told staff it was revising its DEI policies. The consultancy chose similar phrasing to Deloitte, telling staff in an internal memo that it was "sunsetting" existing goals and programs.

Deloitte did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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