One of Australia’s largest consulting firms has revealed the amount of money its bosses make and the figures are staggering.
Accenture’s ANZ branch responded to a question on notice in parliament by revealing that dozens of its managing directors raked in excess of $1 million in the financial year just gone.
Of the 273 managing directors in the Australian arm of the US-listed company, 34 brought home more than $1 million.
That is about 12 per cent of the overall cohort of big bosses.
According to analysis from The Australian Financial Review, the average pay packet of a managing director at Accenture works out to be $630,000.
For those that made significantly less, it’s understood they do not work full-time at the company or they did not work for the entire duration of a year.
Accenture’s CEO Peter Burns is understood to have earned $2.5 million in the past 12 months ending June, according to the publication, the highest earner at the company.
The pointed questions Greens senator Barbara Pocock directed at Accenture in a parliamentary sitting come amid a reckoning in Australia’s consulting sector.
In June, revelations emerged that big four accounting firm PwC used confidential information from the government to market tax avoidance schemes around the world.
Like Accenture, politicians compelled PwC to reveal the pay of its bosses.
In July, to co-operate with a Senate inquiry into the tax scandal, PwC admitted that 304 its partners made $1 million or more.
It’s understood PwC’s ex-CEO Tom Seymour was the highest-paid partner at the firm in the 2021-2022 financial year, with a salary of between $4.45 million and $4.5 million.
An additional 546 partners at PwC had their earnings mostly bunched around the $650,000 to $999,000 range for their pay packet.
PwC’s average pay for a partner is around $930,000, according to the business.
However, partners are reportedly taking a 30 per cent pay cut in light of the scandal.
Other big four accounting firms have also alluded to the pay of their corporate leaders.
Deloitte said its average partner made around the $500,000 to $600,000 mark.
At KPMG, this was slightly higher at $700,000 while it stands at $950,000 for EY, according to the most recently available data.
In a direct comparison with Accenture, PwC comes out on top in terms of the pay its bosses receive.
While 12.5 per cent of Accenture’s Australian bosses made over the $1 million mark, the number was much higher at PwC, at 35 per cent.
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However, it’s worth noting that Accenture is a company rather than a partnership, like PwC.
That means the managing directors at Accenture are on salaries.
Meanwhile, PwC is run as a partnership, rather than a proprietary limited company, which means all the profits are divvied up between its partners.
