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Deloitte in the UK reported profits available for distribution to partners and retired partners of £572m for the year ended 31 May 2007, an increase of 17 per cent over the previous year.

John Connolly, Deloitte’s Senior Partner and Chief Executive and Chairman of the Deloitte Global Organisation, commented: “Our performance reflects strong markets creating growing opportunities to serve our clients, the importance of London as both the primary global financial and professional services centre, and particularly, in the level of mergers and acquisition activity."

“We have expanded our presence across all client segments.  We now provide significant services to 95 per cent of FTSE100 companies and have worked for over 80 per cent of Central Government Departments, devolved administrations in Scotland and Northern Ireland and over 50 of the larger local authorities and regional bodies."

“Our audit practice includes revenues related to the audit of financial statements, audit related services for audit clients and due diligence risk consulting and advisory services provided by our audit staff for audit and wider firm clients. Revenues increased by 14.4 per cent with continued strong performances from the Financial Services and Enterprise Risk Services.  Other core audit markets saw weaker growth following reduced activity from IFRS conversion advice and preparation for Sarbanes-Oxley compared with the previous year.  We continue to grow our market share of the FTSE350 audit clients, and the most recent additions to our FTSE100 list of clients were Royal Sun Alliance Plc and SEGRO Plc."

He said 36 per cent of total firm revenue was earned from clients for whom Deloitte are auditors. Within this 20 per cent of total firm revenue related to audit fees.

Deloitte's tax practice grew at 19.2 per cent. Connolly said, "A changing tax environment with increasing focus by tax authorities and tax payers on the accuracy, efficiency and timeliness of tax reporting saw exceptional growth in our Tax Management Consulting service line and the recent actions by the UK government to address UK business tax competitiveness is driving significant activity amongst our international clients focusing on the tax efficacy of their global operations.  Our specialist teams advising Private Equity, Infrastructure and Real Estate clients benefited from a very active segment."

Consulting revenue increased by 12.9 per cent, while growth of 15.8 per cent in Deloitte's Corporate Finance practice was fuelled by strong mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity.

"We ended the year top of the Big Four in M&A League tables in the UK and Europe. Success with the Disposals Service and continued investment in our Fund Placement and Debt Advisory offerings helped drive another good year for our Advisory business.  We experienced exceptional growth in our transaction support and post merger integration activities. Forensic and Dispute Services had an outstanding performance with a number of very major regulatory investigation assignments. In a quiet market, Reorganisation Services did well in delivering growth and winning a number of significant insolvency and restructuring engagements," according to Connolly.

Profit before tax grew by 22.3 per cent to £564m and total profit available for distribution to partners and retired partners grew by 17 per cent to £572m with profit growth in Audit growing more slowly, reflecting lower revenue growth in the core audit practice.

In 2007 the average number of partners and staff in the firm was 11,300, an increase of 14% over the previous year.  Deloitte UK recruited 1400 new graduates, their largest ever intake and promoted or hired from outside the firm 80 new partners.

“Historically, August is a quiet holiday month, but this year has been different as the world markets react to the US sub-prime shock.  Credit availability and confidence generally has been affected and undoubtedly we will have a more cautious environment going forward, with particular impact on some parts of the M&A market.  The underlying economy does, however, remain strong and business levels in the early period of the current year are good.  We look forward with confidence to the period ahead," Connolly commented.