EY partners account for £651,000 each

Partners at EY each took home £651,000 in 2012-13, despite what the firm’s UK leader described as the “distraction” of a regulatory inquiry into the Big Four bean-counters.

Steve Varley, chairman and managing partner for the UK and Ireland, said he was “looking forward” to the Competition Commission review ending.

The inquiry’s chairwoman Laura Carstensen is preparing her final report with a series of tough measures to break the stranglehold EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers have on the listed audit market. The investigation has dragged on for two years, which Mr Varley said had been a “distraction for myself and the partners who have been interviewed and taken up quite a lot of resources, including internal and external lawyers.”

He hailed results that saw 565 partners split a £368 million pot, up from £328 million last year. On average partners got an extra £54,000 as group UK revenue rose 6% to £1.7 billion. Partners at PwC and Deloitte typically pocketed between £705,000 and £772,000.