Mexico contributes to record revenues for EY with impressive growth

Driven by its advisory line and emerging markets, Ernst & Young has recorded strong growth over the past year to amass record global revenues of $34.8 billion – with the Big Four firm achieving 15.3% growth in Mexico. 

EY has continued to close the gap on its Big Four rivals PwC and Deloitte with its eighth consecutive year of growth; its revenues rising by 7.4% in local currency (and 11% in US dollars) against 2017 over the past financial year. Growth was achieved across all of its major service lines and markets, including a 7.4% rise in the Americas and a huge 15.3% spike in Mexico – making the nation one of the firm’s hottest performers.

Altogether, the Americas contributed $15.6 billion to the record haul, with earnings in the US accounting for $14 billion of the sum, for the region to be the firm’s second largest growth market behind the Asia Pacific (10.5%) for both the past year and with respect to its five year annual compound growth rate of 9%. Next to its booming business in India (up 16.3%), Mexico proved to be one of the firm’s standout country markets.

The firm also saw a 4.9% boost to its headcount in the Americas to take its total number to over 70,000 employees in the region – of a now more than 260,000 worldwide (up 5.7% on 2017). Globally, EY has upwards of 700 offices in more than 150 countries, with offices in approximately 80 locations across Central and South America and 16 in Mexico alone. 1,147 new partners were admitted globally last year, with a nearly a third from emerging markets.

In addition to its activity in emerging markets, the firm’s revenue growth over the past year were also driven by its advisory and transaction advisory lines, which were up 10.1% and 13.9% respectively, against more modest growth of 4.4% and 6.4% for EY’s tax and assurance divisions. The varying results across the divisions is reflected in staff numbers, with 11.7% increases in headcounts for both its advisory and transaction lines.

The total figures across departments for EY however still favored its tax and assurance services, with over $20 billion of its total global revenues coming from these streams. As a breakdown, the firm’s assurance division pulled in over $12.5 billion, and its tax division nearly $9 billion – with the remainder generated through its advisory offering (~$9.6 billion) and transaction department, which achieved revenues of $3.6 billion-plus.

In terms of EY’s advisory segment, this area was strongly supported by developments in Industry 4.0 technologies, including intelligent automation, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics and cybersecurity – with the firm claiming it has internally saved more than 2.1 million people hours and brought higher accuracy to manual processes through the use of 700 developed bots. All up, EY is currently using over 2,000 bots across its business and client services.

With the release of the report, Mark Weinberger, EY’s Global Chairman and CEO, said; “"This year more clients turned to EY for support in their digital and transformation strategies, and for our bedrock services across audit and tax. Our significant and innovative investments are driving growth and supporting the delivery of high-quality services. Most of all, our success is driven by the contributions of 260,000 EY people around the world.”