Recruiting in China

Deloitte, one of the world's four biggest accountancy firms, is planning to beef up its staffing pool in China from the current 6,000 to 9,000 by 2009 to handle its growing business in the country, a top executive said yesterday.

"Currently we have 6,000 professionals in 10 offices in China serving our clients and we expect (the number) to be in the range of 9,000 in 2009," said Manoj P. Singh, regional chief executive officer for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Asia-Pacific region.

"Our presence is sometimes dictated by the needs of our clients," said Singh, who took the post in 2003.

"Building larger practices on the (Chinese) mainland is part of our growth strategy," the CEO said.

China is already one of the top eight markets for Deloitte's global operations as measured by staff numbers, Singh said.

The service firm has seen tremendous growth in China in the past few years thanks to the country's booming economy, he said, declining to reveal specific revenue figures.

Deloitte achieved aggregate revenue of US$18.2 billion last year, a 10.9 per cent increase over the US$16.4 billion reported the previous year.

"We have been growing at a double-digit rate both in terms of headcount and revenue in China in the last couple of years," said P. Christopher Lu, regional managing partner.

Singh said the firm's market share had increased four-fold among the top 100 Chinese companies over the past three years, including not only auditing services but also consulting, tax and other services.

"Our strategy is focusing on building our brand around the transformation of Chinese companies, especially for those top 100 and 200 firms," Singh said.

He said the services firm is well-positioned to provide auditing, tax and management consulting services to help build domestic enterprises into world-class or Fortune 500 companies.

Deloitte's existing client base in China is dominated by multinational companies operating in the country, but this varies according to the service.

For example, Lu said, about 70 per cent of its tax customers are multinational companies, while about 65 per cent of its corporate financing customers are foreign firms.

But he said Deloitte is luring more and more Chinese companies.

"We could only achieve our six-year strategy by having the right balance of both local domestic firms and multinational companies and being able to provide valuable services to them," Singh said, referring to his firm's ambitious goal to become the best service provider, a roadmap announced three years ago.

The company announced two years ago it would invest US$150 million in China over the next few years, which Singh said "is the biggest and most significant" global investment the firm had ever made.

The investment in recruitment, training and resources is "well on track," said Singh.

Global CEO Bill Parrett said last year that the firm planned to build China as its second-largest market by 2010 and the largest by 2030.

Source: China Daily