Deloitte posted record global revenues of $39bn and hired 70,000 staff in the year to the end of May as it tries to retain its status as the world’s largest accountancy firm.

The group’s 7 per cent year-on-year revenue increase came on the back of a double-digit rise in fee income in its risk advisory and consulting divisions, and far outstripped competitor EY’s revenues of $31bn.

PwC, which traditionally battles with Deloitte for the top spot, has not yet reported its results.

Audit and assurance, traditionally the backbone of Deloitte’s business model, posted slower revenue growth of 1 per cent. The division, which accounts for about a third of Deloitte’s revenues, won several large audit contracts from multinationals in the latest financial year, including GlaxoSmithKline, BAE and BP.

The accounting firm’s hiring surge — the equivalent of one person hired every eight minutes — led to an 8 per cent increase in headcount. This brought the size of the workforce to 264,000.

13% Increase in revenues at Deloitte’s risk advisory division

The risk advisory unit, which provides companies with advice on potential threats to their businesses from issues such as cyber crime and regulation, was the fastest growing division, with a 13 per cent rise in revenues.

Deloitte’s consulting division, its largest business line, recorded a 10 per cent uptick in revenues, which the firm attributed to investments in areas including artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing and blockchain technology.

Chief executive Punit Renjen said that although consulting revenues were growing much faster, “audit is central to who we are and will remain central to who we are. That’s our intent”.

During the past decade the Big Four accountancy firms have moved to diversify their businesses and reduced their reliance on audit work, in part because of rising competition for these contracts and heightened regulatory scrutiny of accounting practices. The growth of ancillary businesses has raised concerns from some industry critics, who worry that the audit side might feel pressure to go easy on consultancy clients.

Mr Renjen acknowledged that pressure from regulators on auditors to maintain high standards across their global businesses was one of the biggest challenges facing the company.

“[Regulators] are demanding consistency across the globe, which is profoundly affecting how we operate. We can’t go back and argue with a regulator and say a standard applied in the UK cannot be applied everywhere else. Regulators are asking for ever increasing levels of quality and responsiveness,” he said.

Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC have all been fined by regulators around the world during the past 12 months, highlighting the difficulty of eliminating misconduct in global networks of linked firms that employ hundreds of thousands of staff and span dozens of countries.

These issues came to the fore again this week when pressure mounted on KPMG over work the accounting firm’s South Africa business did for the controversial Gupta family.

Mr Renjen said that maintaining high standards within Deloitte’s audit division and collaborating with regulators would remain an important priority for the firm.

“We don’t make a product — the most important things we have is our brand and reputation, and the quality of our people,” he said. “If we compromise our brand or reputation, it has a massive impact on us. We are very mindful of that.”

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