10,000 PwC partners to get $1m each

Partners at City accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers today woke to the news they will each be $1 million - or £688,000 - better off when the firm floats its consulting wing.

More than 1,000 London partners will benefit from the flotation, which is expected to value the company at about $9 billion. Ten thousand partners worldwide will share in the bonanza,

One partner at the company's head office in London said: "It's time to be thinking about early retirement on a small, hot island somewhere a long way away from a balance sheet."

The flotation could be filed on the New York Stock Exchange as early as this week and comes as a welcome contrast to the crisis that has beset the accounting world since the collapse of Enron.

Senior partners in New York and London voted last Friday to press ahead with the flotation, which will be the biggest on Wall Street so far this year. It comes as the consulting branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers reportedly looks for a new name to distance itself from the accounting profession.

However, the flotation will be well below the $18 million price tag placed on the company two years ago, when it was in merger talks with computer giant Hewlett-Packard. That deal was abandoned after Hewlett-Packard's share price fell sharply over fears it had overvalued the business.