PwC has struck a five-year deal with GE to provide tax services to the company using more than 600 of its own tax team.
Under the terms of the deal around half of GE’s tax team will join PwC. The professional services business already has the largest tax practice in the world, with a global network of 41,000 professionals operating in 157 countries.
According to a report in Bloomberg’s Big Law Business, this deal confirms the ongoing changes in the professional services market, a trend underlined by the Big Four’s shift into the provision of legal services.
“It is the evolution of the professional service firm model,” said David Wilkins, a Harvard Law professor who is conducting research into the Big Four, in the Bloomberg report. “It’s just one more example of the rapid blurring of the boundaries between what used to be thought of as separate and distinct professional services.”
In a statement PwC says it believes that with the GE deal it has “identified an opportunity that recognises the future needs of a rapidly changing marketplace”.
PwC vice chairman and managing partner Mark Mendola said the arrangement would enable PwC to continue providing its clients with the best tax services in an increasingly volatile and uncertain environment.
“Integrating GE’s talent with PwC’s broad capabilities will allow us to deliver upon the tax function of the future in an increasingly digitally-enabled tax world,” added Mendola.
The new team will sit within PwC Tax and will provide managed services not only to GE but also to other PwC clients. The five-year, renewable agreement will be effective from 1 April.
The post PwC hires half of GE’s tax team in groundbreaking deal appeared first on The Lawyer | Legal News and Jobs | Advancing the business of law.