Restive Deloitte workers threatening Toadfish-esque delinquency appear to have galvanised Giam Swiegers to offer a belated response to the firm’s double digit growth. Pictured in yet another flamboyant corporate outfit, Swiegers lamented in BRW (25/06) that the11% growth in revenue was the product of a ‘difficult’ year.
We’re a professional services firm and if we lose a month there’s no stock that we can sell at a discount
So if a month was ‘lost’, would revenue growth instead have been, say, 10% rather than 11%? Fantastic analogy, Giam, but what about the fustian nonsense that Deloitte should earn the right to grow?
[A] single statement that I heard Mehrdad Baghai utter over dinner, [that] “companies have to earn the right to grow”… resonated very strongly with me, as I felt that, in the past, we had put too much emphasis on achieving growth at the expense of profits…We are taking a much more granular approach to how we pursue growth opportunities in our business compared to what we were doing previously. That is reflected in our revenue and profit growth – basically, our profits are now growing at twice the rate of our revenues.
Profits growing at double the rate of the 11% revenue growth? That’s a massive 22% rise in partner profit! Hard to justify when senior staff are paid peanuts and everyone else is subject to a pay freeze.
If Deloitte kept on a few more of the workers who are rumoured to have been managed-out, and consequently ‘lost a month’ or two, then in our view the firm might more readily contend that it has ‘earned’ the right to grow. But to freeze pay, reportedly cut learning and development budgets and allegedly manage-out many workers does not, in our view, entitle Deloitte partners to claim that they “earned” 22% profit growth in the sense suggested by business commentator Mehrdad Baghai.
Do you think Deloitte partners have “earned” a massive jump in profits? Send the Firm Spy your news and views!
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Deloitte is all about increasing partner profits and hence thier salaries at the expense of staff. Currently there have been staff who have left our cluster and the client work is redistributed – and there are pay freezes. Its all about screwing staff to get more money in the pocket!!