Key Takeaways
Slower growth: PwC’s revenue grew 3.5% to $60.2bn, trailing Deloitte and EY.
Uneven regional performance: Asia-Pacific rebounded 7.7%, while EMEA barely grew at 0.7%.
Lasting scandal impact: PwC continues rebuilding after significant commercial losses in Australia and China.
Record partner pay: PwC UK partners received record underlying average profits despite falling group revenue and workforce cuts.
AI returns unclear: PwC invested $3bn in capabilities, including AI, but disclosed limited evidence of the financial returns.
PwC reported global revenue of $60.2 billion for the financial year ended June 2026, up 5.7% in US dollar terms. Excluding the effects of currency fluctuations, revenue grew by 3.5%, trailing Deloitte's 3.8% and EY's 4.7%.
But the headline numbers conceal a more complicated picture. PwC's growth accelerated from 2.7% to 3.5%, while Deloitte's slowed from 4.8% to 3.8%.
The analysis becomes even more interesting when the revenue growth figures are broken down by region. PwC is growing faster in the Americas and Asia-Pacific than Deloitte and EY.
Asia-Pacific: a recovery from two damaging scandals?
PwC’s Asia-Pacific business has experienced considerable turbulence over the past four years. Revenue fell from $10.01 billion in FY2023 to $9.30 billion in FY2024 and $8.85 billion in FY2025, before recovering to $9.46 billion in FY2026.
The two consecutive years of contraction coincided with the fallout from major scandals involving PwC’s Australian and Chinese practices.
Although PwC returned to growth in FY2026 after two years of contraction, its reported Asia-Pacific revenue remained below its FY2023 level. Nor does regional growth establish that the Australian and Chinese businesses have individually regained the revenue they lost.
PwC identified India, Japan and South Korea among the markets performing strongly, meaning that growth elsewhere in Asia-Pacific could be compensating for continued weakness in the markets most directly affected by the scandals.
The Australia Tax-Leaks Scandal
In Australia, the tax-leaks scandal had significant commercial consequences. Former PwC partner Peter Collins shared confidential government information about proposed tax avoidance legislation with colleagues, who used it to develop and market tax strategies to multinational clients. The revelations triggered parliamentary investigations, regulatory scrutiny and a crisis of confidence in the firm.
PwC lost clients, including Westpac, and in November 2023 completed the sale of its Australian government consulting business to Allegro Funds for just A$1. The divested business, subsequently renamed Scyne Advisory, had generated A$680 million in FY2023, accounting for approximately 20% of PwC Australia’s revenue. Around 1,500 partners and employees transferred to the new firm.
The financial consequences were substantial. In FY2024, PwC Australia’s Consulting revenue fell 55.6% to A$400 million, with the firm attributing the decline partly to the divestment and its associated effects, alongside weaker consulting demand. Assurance revenue also declined 12.5%, with PwC identifying the disposal as a contributing factor.
The Evergrande Scandal
In China, the fallout from the Evergrande accounting scandal led to the loss of major audit clients. PwC had audited the heavily indebted property developer for years before resigning in January 2023. Chinese regulators subsequently sanctioned its mainland audit practice over serious deficiencies in the Evergrande audits, imposing a six-month suspension and a financial penalty of approximately US$62 million.
By July 2024, PwC Zhong Tian had lost more than 20 mainland-listed audit clients, including China Life Insurance and China Railway Group. According to figures compiled by Wind Information and reported by the Financial Times, the departing clients represented approximately RMB561 million in annual accounting fees, out of RMB869 million generated from mainland-listed companies in 2023.
The fallout benefited PwC’s competitors. Reuters reported in August 2024 that EY had secured at least 12 former PwC audit clients in China, with associated fees exceeding RMB230 million, while KPMG had won another 12.
Although these client transfers demonstrate how PwC's difficulties benefited competitors, the available figures do not establish how materially they contributed to EY's narrowing global revenue gap with PwC.
What does PwC’s Asia-Pacific recovery tell us?
Recovering revenue is not the same as recovering the business that was lost. PwC Australia’s government consulting operations were sold and are no longer part of the firm. In China, audit clients that transferred to competitors may never return. These losses disrupted PwC’s revenue base and its established client relationships, creating a gap that subsequent growth must overcome.
PwC can rebuild its regional revenue through growth in other markets and services without reversing those losses. The question is therefore not simply whether Asia-Pacific revenue has recovered, but how much the composition of PwC’s business has changed in the process.
EMEA: Weak Revenue Growth, Record Partner Profits
PwC’s performance in Europe, the Middle East and Africa presents a different picture from Asia-Pacific. Revenue grew just 0.7% in FY2026, compared with 3.5% at Deloitte and 5.1% at EY.
All three firms operated in a region affected by geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty and disruption to investment. Yet Deloitte and EY managed to achieve substantially stronger growth. Geopolitical pressures alone therefore cannot adequately explain PwC’s comparatively weak performance.
There is one important qualification to the comparison. EY includes India within its EMEIA region, whereas PwC and Deloitte include India within Asia-Pacific. EY’s 5.1% growth rate therefore covers a different geographical market.
Nevertheless, PwC’s performance warrants closer examination.
The Middle East was a major source of weakness. PwC’s UK Consolidated Group, which includes the UK, Middle East and Channel Islands businesses, reported a 3% decline in revenue to £6.155 billion. Within that group, Middle East revenue fell 15%, from £1.981 billion to £1.685 billion.
PwC's global results acknowledged challenging operating conditions across EMEA without identifying the causes of its weak regional growth. However, the firm also faced a more specific commercial setback.
In February 2025, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) imposed a one-year restriction on awarding new advisory and consulting contracts to PwC. The restriction reportedly extended to the fund’s subsidiaries, although existing audit work was unaffected.
The dispute reportedly arose after PwC attempted to poach NEOM's chief internal audit officer, Jason Davies. The Financial Times reported that the attempted recruitment had caused friction with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. Davies ultimately did not join PwC. Neither PwC nor PIF publicly confirmed the precise grounds for the restriction.
The ban was lifted in January 2026, allowing PwC to resume competing for new assignments.
The precise financial impact of the restriction has not been disclosed. Nevertheless, it represents a firm-specific factor that needs to be considered alongside the wider geopolitical and economic environment.
The available figures do not establish whether PwC’s weaker regional growth resulted from differences in client exposure, its mix of services, the PIF restriction or other factors. They do, however, suggest that attributing the performance gap entirely to geopolitical disruption would be an incomplete explanation.
Falling Revenue in EMEA, Rising Partner Profits in the UK
Revenue growth, however, tells only part of the story for a partnership.
Despite the 3% decline in the UK Consolidated Group’s revenue, average distributable profit per UK partner increased 8%, from £865,000 to a record £935,000.
As Big4News previously reported, the improvement came after several years of restructuring, workforce reductions and tighter cost control.
Average workforce numbers across the consolidated group fell from 35,430 to 31,206 in FY2026, a reduction of 4,224 employees, or almost 12%. According to the Financial Times, salary costs declined by £164 million, or 6%.
The UK partnership has also become smaller. Companies House records cited by Financial News showed 976 partners, compared with 1,057 in July 2023. PwC has also moved some equity partners into managing-director roles, reducing the number of people entitled to share in partnership profits.
This illustrates an important feature of the Big Four business model: average partner remuneration depends not only on revenue, but also on operating costs, the profits available for distribution and the number of partners sharing those profits.
Workforce reductions can help protect profitability even when revenue growth stalls. A smaller equity partnership can also increase average profit per partner without a corresponding increase in the total profit pool.
The result is that PwC’s UK partners received record underlying average distributions in a year when the wider group’s revenue declined and its workforce contracted substantially.
Service Lines: Tax Leads as Advisory Growth Slows
PwC’s service-line results reveal another dimension of its uneven performance.
Tax and Legal Services was the fastest-growing business in FY2026, increasing revenue by 6.3% at constant exchange rates to $13.9 billion. Assurance grew 2.6% to $20.5 billion, while Advisory, the firm’s largest division, grew 3.0% to $25.8 billion.
These figures are adjusted for changes in business structures and service-line classifications to provide a more consistent year-on-year comparison.
The contrast with FY2025 is particularly interesting. Advisory growth slowed from 4.4% to 3.0%, while Assurance accelerated from 0.9% to 2.6% and Tax and Legal Services from 2.8% to 6.3%.
The relative strength of tax services was not unique to PwC. Deloitte reported 5.8% growth in Tax and Legal, while EY’s Tax business grew 6.0%.
Assurance presents a different picture. Deloitte reported growth of 5.0% and EY 3.0%, compared with PwC’s 2.6%.
Consulting is more difficult to compare. PwC reports a broad Advisory division, while Deloitte separates Technology & Transformation from Strategy, Risk & Transactions, and EY reports Consulting separately from EY-Parthenon.
The published results therefore establish that PwC’s overall Advisory growth slowed, but do not allow us to determine precisely how its consulting, deals and other advisory activities performed against equivalent businesses at its competitors.
AI: Investment Without a Clear Measure of Returns
PwC continued investing heavily in artificial intelligence and technology during FY2026, reporting $3 billion in network-wide capability investments, compared with $3.1 billion the previous year.
The figures cover more than AI alone, and PwC does not disclose how much was spent specifically on artificial intelligence in FY2026.
Among the developments were the initial rollout of PwC One, an AI-enabled platform bringing together the firm’s knowledge and expertise, continued investment in an AI-native assurance platform, and new technology-enabled tax and service-delivery capabilities. More than 330,000 PwC employees have also participated in AI training.
However, the financial benefits of these investments are difficult to establish from the published results. PwC does not separately disclose AI-related revenue, network-wide profitability or measurable productivity gains attributable to the technology. This makes it difficult to assess whether AI investment is generating additional business, reducing the cost of existing services or improving profitability.
The distinction is particularly relevant to Advisory, PwC’s largest business, where underlying revenue growth slowed from 4.4% in FY2025 to 3.0% in FY2026. Slower growth does not necessarily indicate that AI investment is underperforming: technology can improve efficiency without producing corresponding revenue growth.
Interestingly, PwC’s own research emphasises the importance of translating AI adoption into measurable financial returns. Its April 2026 AI Performance Study identified a significant divide between organisations achieving material benefits from AI and those struggling to move beyond experimentation.
Yet PwC’s global results provide limited visibility into the returns being generated by its own investments.
For now, the firm’s disclosures demonstrate the scale of its technological transformation, rather than its financial impact.
What Is Holding Back PwC’s Growth?
PwC’s FY2026 results suggest that its slower growth is not the consequence of a single problem, but of several pressures affecting different parts of its global network.
In Asia-Pacific, the firm is rebuilding revenue after two years of contraction and significant commercial losses following the Australian tax-leaks and Evergrande scandals. In EMEA, geopolitical uncertainty coincided with firm-specific difficulties, including the Saudi PIF restriction. Meanwhile, Advisory growth slowed, even as Tax and Legal Services gained momentum.
Yet the results also demonstrate the resilience of the partnership model. PwC’s UK partners received record underlying average profit distributions despite falling consolidated revenue and substantial workforce reductions.
The bigger question is whether PwC can restore sustained growth across its businesses while adapting to a changing professional services market. Its investments in AI may reshape how services are delivered, but the financial benefits remain difficult to assess from the published figures.
PwC is not struggling everywhere. Its challenge is turning a patchwork of regional recoveries, commercial setbacks and technological investments into more consistent growth across its global network.
This article is part of the Big4News Investigations & Analysis series, which examines the structural forces shaping Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG.
For more cases involving the Big Four audit firms, explore our Global Big Four Scandal Timeline, which documents major controversies, regulatory investigations, enforcement actions and corporate scandals involving the firms around the world.
About Claudine Cassar
I’m a corporate anthropologist and former Deloitte equity partner. I sold my technology business to Deloitte in 2016 and led the Malta Consulting team for five years. I am the founder and editor of Big4News, which provides independent, clear analysis of PwC, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG — free from corporate spin.
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