Ernst & Young Global Limited

Is Ernst & Young Global Limited publicly traded?
No. EYG is a company limited by guarantee with no share capital. The member firms it coordinates are partner-owned partnerships, so no part of the EY network trades on any stock exchange.

Who owns EY?
The firm's equity partners. Each national member firm is owned by its partners, and those firms collectively own and govern the network through EYG. There are no external shareholders.

When was EY founded?
Ernst & Young formed in 1989 through the merger of Ernst & Whinney and Arthur Young & Co. The oldest predecessor practice dates to a London firm established in 1849.

What does EY do?
The network provides assurance ($17.9 billion FY2025), consulting ($16.4 billion), tax ($12.7 billion), and strategy and transactions services ($6.2 billion). It audits many of the world's largest companies and advises on transformation, deals, and compliance.

Who is the CEO of EY?
Janet Truncale has been EY Global Chair and CEO since July 2024. She previously led the Americas Financial Services practice and is the first woman to head a Big Four firm.

Why did EY abandon its plan to split?
Project Everest would have separated audit from advisory, but it needed support from member firms worldwide. The US firm balked over pension liabilities and deal economics, and partners voted the plan down in 2023 after significant internal cost and debate.

How does EY compare to the other Big Four firms?
By FY2025 revenue, Deloitte leads at $70.5 billion, PwC is second at $56.9 billion, EY third at $53.2 billion, and KPMG fourth at roughly $38 billion. EY is strongest in assurance and tax, and has the widest country footprint.

The deepest root is a London accountancy practice founded in 1849, which by the late nineteenth century was led by Frederick Whinney and later carried his name. Whinney's firm merged internationally in 1979 with Ernst & Ernst, the Cleveland practice founded by brothers Alwin and Theodore Ernst in 1903, creating Ernst & Whinney.

Arthur Young, a Glasgow-born accountant, opened his own Chicago firm in 1906. Arthur Young & Co. became known for work in oil, banking, and later technology, and developed a reputation for aggressive growth and an entrepreneurial culture.

The 1989 merger of Ernst & Whinney and Arthur Young & Co. produced Ernst & Young, at the time the largest accounting firm on earth. The deal was part of the consolidation that reduced the Big Eight to the Big Six and eventually the Big Four after the 1998 PwC merger and the 2002 fall of Arthur Andersen.

EY sold its consulting practice to Capgemini in 2000 as post-Enron independence rules loomed, then rebuilt advisory over the next two decades. Acquisitions included the Monitor Group's strategy practice in 2008 and The Parthenon Group in 2014, which together formed EY-Parthenon. In 2013 the firm shortened its brand mark to EY.

A defining recent episode was Project Everest, the 2022 to 2023 plan to split the network into an audit firm and an advisory firm. Member firms, led by the US practice's objections over pension liabilities and economics, voted it down. The episode reportedly cost hundreds of millions of dollars and prompted leadership changes in the United States.

Janet Truncale became global chair and CEO in July 2024, the first woman to lead a Big Four firm. Under her tenure the network reported $53.2 billion in FY2025 revenue, up 4.0 percent in local currency, with AI-related revenue growing 30 percent year over year and headcount recovering to 406,206.

EY has appeared on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list in the United States for more than two decades, an unusually long run for a professional services firm. It also places regularly on Universum's most attractive employer rankings for business students and on Great Place to Work lists in multiple countries.

The firm's Entrepreneur of the Year program, running since 1986, is itself a form of industry recognition whose alumni include founders of major public companies. EY's thought leadership, including the Global Capital Confidence Barometer, is widely cited in financial media.

The Wirecard collapse remains the deepest wound. EY audited the German payments company for a decade before it failed in 2020, admitting that 1.9 billion euros of supposed cash probably never existed. Germany's audit regulator APAS fined EY and banned it from new public-interest audit engagements in Germany for two years, and several former partners faced criminal proceedings. The scandal cost EY major German audit clients and remains a reference point in debates about audit quality.

In June 2022 the US Securities and Exchange Commission fined EY $100 million, then a record against an audit firm, after determining that hundreds of professionals had cheated on ethics components of the CPA exam and that the firm had misled investigators. The penalty followed a separate $10 million SEC settlement in 2021 over auditor independence violations.

Project Everest's collapse in 2023 was an internal rather than regulatory controversy, but it was expensive and public. Member firms have also paid audit fines in the UK, including sanctions related to engagements at the collapsed British Home Stores's former parent and other clients. More recently, a UK tribunal case brought by a former partner drew attention to internal treatment of whistleblowers, and the firm faced criticism in Spain over working conditions at its Barcelona offices.