Wrong forum Credit crunch effect on business for accountants and auditors

I hope this thread isn't too narrowly-focused.

Are accountants/auditors in Ireland experiencing a slow down at the moment, and if so, to what extent?

I understand KPMG UK are cutting back to 4 day weeks in many of their lines of service, and offering extented unpaid holiday periods.

KPMG are doing this in the UK, but I haven't seen the Irish firm following suit at this stage.

You could be cynical and say that the accountants and auditors do well no matter what the market does. In a boom the number and price of audits go up, and in a bust the number of receiverships and liquidations goes up.



I think they are all just recruiting far fewer people now. The job market for accountants will likely get much tougher.

You will almost certainly see some redundancies too. In the UK I think that the big firms have already done some of this.

In the UK, KPMG partners' earnings dropped by £100k each in 2008, from £800k to £700k.

I'm worried about them...



I know they let a lot of partners go, so that helps them keep the average earnings per partner high.

So I don't think you'll see many new partners for a while.

Since partnerships in Ireland don't have to file accounts we don't know how they are being affected here.