PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited

Is PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited publicly traded?
No. PwCIL is a private company limited by guarantee with no share capital. The member firms it coordinates are partnerships owned by their local equity partners, so there is no PwC stock at any level of the network.

Who owns PwC?
Effectively, the firm's senior partners. Each national member firm is owned by its equity partners, and those firms collectively govern the network through PwCIL. There are no outside shareholders, parent companies, or controlling families.

When was PwC founded?
The modern firm formed on July 1, 1998, when Price Waterhouse merged with Coopers & Lybrand. Its oldest roots run to Samuel Lowell Price's London practice of 1849 and William Cooper's of 1854.

What does PwC actually do?
The network delivers three service lines: advisory and consulting ($24.3 billion in FY2025), assurance and audit ($19.8 billion), and tax and legal services ($12.7 billion). It serves 82 percent of the Fortune Global 500.

How does PwC compare to the other Big Four firms?
By FY2025 revenue, Deloitte leads at $70.5 billion, PwC is second at $56.9 billion, EY is third at $53.2 billion, and KPMG is fourth at roughly $38 billion. PwC has historically been strongest in audit market share among US listed companies.

What were PwC's biggest recent scandals?
The two largest were the 2023 Australian tax leaks affair, which forced a sale of the government consulting practice, and the 2024 six-month suspension of its Chinese audit unit over Evergrande work. Both damaged regional revenue and reputation.

How many people work at PwC?
Approximately 364,000 people worked across the network in 136 countries and territories as of FY2025, making it one of the largest professional workforces in the world.

The firm's ancestry begins in mid-nineteenth century London. Samuel Lowell Price started an accounting practice in 1849. Edwin Waterhouse joined in 1865, creating the partnership that became Price, Waterhouse & Co., which grew into a leading auditor of industrial and railway companies. William Cooper founded Cooper Brothers in 1854, and his descendants ran the firm for generations.

In the United States, William Lybrand, T. Edward Ross, Adam Ross, and Robert Montgomery founded Lybrand, Ross Brothers & Montgomery in Philadelphia in 1898. In 1957, Cooper Brothers merged with Lybrand's American practice and the Canadian firm McDonald, Currie to create Coopers & Lybrand, an early attempt to organize a multinational accounting partnership under one name.

Through the twentieth century both firms expanded globally. Price Waterhouse became known for auditing major American corporations and for its long-running role as ballot tabulator for the Academy Awards, a relationship dating to 1934. Coopers & Lybrand built strength in Canada, Australia, and Europe.

The 1980s and 1990s brought consolidation across the profession. The Big Eight became the Big Six after the 1989 mergers that created Ernst & Young and Deloitte & Touche. In 1997, Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand announced a merger of equals, and the combined firm launched as PricewaterhouseCoopers on July 1, 1998. The new firm immediately became the world's largest professional services organization.

Regulatory pressure reshaped the business after the Enron and WorldCom scandals. In 2002, PwC sold its management consulting arm to IBM for approximately $3.5 billion. The same year, Arthur Andersen's collapse reduced the Big Five to the Big Four. PwC rebuilt advisory capability through acquisitions, most notably Booz & Company in 2014, which it renamed Strategy&.

The 2020s brought both investment and scrutiny. The firm committed more than $1 billion to its AI-enabled Next Generation Audit platform and expanded alliance relationships with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Salesforce. At the same time, the 2023 Australia tax leaks affair and the 2024 China audit suspension tested the limits of the federated model. Mohamed Kande became global chair in July 2024, succeeding Bob Moritz. FY2025 gross revenues reached a record $56.9 billion, though the Asia Pacific region contracted for a second year.

PwC regularly appears on employer rankings. It has held positions on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For in the United States and Universum's most attractive employer lists for business students. The network's research publications, including the annual Global CEO Survey, are widely cited in business and policy discussions.

The most damaging recent episode was the Australian tax leaks scandal. In 2023 it emerged that a former PwC Australia tax chief had shared confidential government tax-planning information inside the firm, which was then used to help clients prepare for the new rules. The affair triggered partner departures, a new Australian CEO, a formal apology, Senate hearings, and the A$1 sale of the firm's federal and state government consulting business.

In September 2024, China's Ministry of Finance suspended PwC Zhong Tian, the network's mainland audit firm, for six months and fined it more than $60 million over failures in its audit of China Evergrande Group. Dozens of Chinese state-owned and listed clients subsequently switched auditors, and the firm laid off staff in the region.

PwC has also faced recurring audit-quality fines. UK and US regulators have sanctioned member firms over audit deficiencies at various clients, and the firm paid settlements related to its work on failed companies. As tabulator for the Academy Awards, PwC bore public responsibility for the 2017 best picture envelope error, after which it revised its backstage procedures while retaining the engagement.