The Big 4 firms – Deloitte, KPMG, PwC and EY – are the four largest professional service networks in the world, offering services in various business areas, most prominent among which are: auditing and accounting; advisory and consulting; tax, risk and legal advice.
The three consulting firms widely regarded as constituting the Big Three, or MBB, are McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company.
The Big 5 management consulting firms, also known as the MBB firms (McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company) and two from the Big Four (Deloitte and PwC), are among the largest and most influential in the world.
The global professional services firms EY, PwC, Deloitte and KPMG make up 'the Big 4'. These firms provide consulting services in four core areas, including strategy. The strategy teams of the Big 4 are small, elite units, each with only a few thousand consultants globally.
PwC and Deloitte are the most prestigious
Big 4 will compete with each other on pricing. PwC and Deloitte will cost more, EY somewhere in the middle, and KPMG will sometimes even take a hit on their margin in order to get the project (so they can use that to build better relationships with the client).
McKinsey & Company is a company that needs no introduction. The company is consistently ranked as the #1 most valued brand in the consulting industry, making it the most prestigious company on the list.
The most prestigious firms are McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. Next most prestigious are "Tier 2" firms such as Kearney, Accenture, and LEK. This tier also includes the strategy consulting arms of the Big 4 firms, including Deloitte Monitor, EY Parthenon, and PwC's Strategy&.
Tier 2 consulting firms are successful, global consulting companies that fall outside the “MBB” firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) or “Big 4” firms (Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and EY), but are still highly reputable and respected.
The term “Big 4” refers to the 4 largest professional services firms by revenue: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (Deloitte), KPMG International (KPMG), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and Ernst & Young (EY).
The Big Six (Kwame Nkrumah; Joseph Boakye ('J.B.') Danquah; Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey; Ebenezer Ako-Adjei; William Ofori Atta; Edward Akufo-Addo)
According to The Economist, the industry's most important firms are the "Great eight" consulting firms which consist of Bain, BCG, McKinsey, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC and Accenture.
Deloitte Consulting is a brand name owned by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd (DTTL), which is a UK limited company. DTTL has a network of member firms (which it doesn't own) that are independent of each other in terms of capital structure and liabilities, and are typically limited liability partnerships.
The Big Three is one of the names given to the three largest strategy consulting firms by revenue: McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain & Company. They are also referred to as MBB. The Big Four consists of the four largest accounting firms by revenue: PwC, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG.
Measured by revenue, the Big Four global accounting firms include Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler (KPMG). The companies provide auditing services, tax, strategy and management consulting, valuation, market research, assurance, and legal advisory services.
Wide-Ranging Expertise. McKinsey's size allows it to offer clients unparalleled expertise in virtually every industry and function, making it a truly comprehensive consulting firm.
PwC, for example, was mentioned in a Times article last year as having an acceptance rate of around 2.5% in 2022, presumably in the UK. That was based on 304,000 applications to 7,400 open positions, more or less on par with what a big investment bank receives.
"Big 4" used to refer to accounting firms. Accenture used to be a part of the "Big 5" with Andersen, but they had to re-brand because of the Enron scandal. They no longer do accounting.
The website dug through more than 170,000 interview ratings and reviews shared throughout the past year to uncover the list. According to reviews on the Glassdoor site, the company with the toughest interview process for a second consecutive year is the prestigious consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
McKinsey, Bain, and BCG don't have a strict GPA cutoff, but they do typically consider anything from 3.6 up as a strong GPA. However, it's not quite that simple. For instance, you may have a 3.4 GPA but have top scores on your SAT or GRE, so all of these academic results will be reviewed.
We would, however, say that the minimum GPA required is 3.0. But if you find that yours is a bit lower than that, just work on your GPA for grad school, gain work experience, or take on leadership roles during your academic career. These are called compensating factors.
KPMG Work Culture
Though the smallest of the Big 4 firms, KPMG is known to have the best work-life balance amongst its employees. The company places an emphasis on employee engagement and has the lowest churn rate of the Big 4.