Golden partnership perks? Not anymore, say the Big Four

As the Big Four giants grapple with profitability challenges, the traditional partnership model is undergoing significant change to prevent the profit pool from being diluted.

The traditional dream at professional services firms – joining, working hard and climbing the ladder to partnership within an LLP structure – now looks very different at the Big Four compared to even five years ago.

During the pandemic the sector was booming, and the Big Four were benefitting from the surge of advice clients were seeking. To fulfil the influx of work, the Big Four embarked on a massive hiring spree, particularly in 2021 and 2022. 

However, over the last two years, that spark has fizzled out.

KPMG, EY, PwC and Deloitte have all been struggling with stagnant profits and ballooning headcount.  

From the bottom to the top, there has been a steady stream of layoffs over the last couple of years as the current economic landscape has seen their traditional “attrition model” fail to keep pace. Put simply, they can’t rely on people leaving to trim their headcount.

But the area where it has been tougher to cut has been at the equity level.

To be an equity partner is to own a part of the business. It is an expensive procedure to remove a person from the equity partnership, but these firms are in a position where even these prestigious positions are not safe from cuts. 

James Ransome, partner at advisory firm Patrick Morgan, told CityAM he is “seeing a clear shift away from the traditional ‘job-for-life’ equity partnership model”.

Knives out for those with a piece of the firms

News broke on Friday that KPMG has begun demoting UK senior equity partners and, instead, has offered them lower-status salaried partner roles. 

“Firms are becoming more performance-driven and, in many cases, more corporate in how they manage senior talent,” Ransome explained. 

The firms don’t offer a breakdown on how many equity partners they have on the books.

CityAM analysed recent Companies House data for each of the Big Four, taking the total profit share and dividing it by the average distribution to estimate how many equity partners each firm has. 

According to this analysis of the most recent financial statements, KPMG had 346 equity partners out of a total of 833, while Deloitte had 606 out of 1,356. EY and PwC headcount figures from public reports were unclear about how they divided their total partnerships between equity and salaried partners. 

The more people are added to the equity partnership, the more the profit pool gets diluted.

Craig McKellar, recruitment specialist from McKellar Consulting, told CityAM, “KPMG recently reported they outperformed EY and PwC on profit per partner for the first time in a long time, and that is because they decided to stop promoting as many people into equity partnership.”

As firms start to take shears to the highest level, they have been making slow moves over the past few years to stall who gets invited to join the top floor.

On top of that, the giants have been slower at making promotions at the competitive partnership level. 

Promo numbers have been slowly dropping

Since its height in 2021, according to annual and financial reports, all Big Four giants have promoted fewer staff from within the firms. 

EY has seen the sharpest decline, with only 34 promotions in 2025, a drop of nearly 70 per cent since 2022. The firm’s drop-off in promotions is partly driven by a cost-cutting pivot following the failure to split the global company into two separate entities in 2023, after spending hundreds of millions on the deal known as Project Everest. 

Deloitte follows closely behind with 60 promotions last year, down from 124 at its peak three years earlier, despite the firm saying in June 2025 that it “continues to promote high performers to its most senior rank.” 

In 2025, PwC said it introduced a new managing director career route, which “diversified” its structure, seemingly creating a senior pathway without the promise of equity. 

Firms have started to create more ‘managing director’ and ‘salaried partner’ roles as a strategy to try to maintain talent with some type of career progression, without reducing equity partner seats. 

Other than trying to keep profits up, there is another reason these firms are getting tough at the top: some partners aren’t the rainmakers the firm expects.

McKellar said many of the Big Four giants have also been “losing young high performers” who are fed up with not seeing their contributions rewarded fairly and “at the expense of more experienced partners who aren’t bringing in fees.” 

“These leaders and performers who leave the Big Four to a LLP or a PE-backed firm for example, are not chasing money,” McKellar added. “They are moving to an environment where they are valued more and where they can be motivated and thrive.”