EY’s Global Head to Retire After Breakup Plan Fails
Carmine Di Sibio became EY’s global chairman and CEO in 2019. Photo: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL By Mark Maurer June 13, 2023 12:01 pm ET Carmine Di Sibio, the global chairman and chief executive of Ernst & Young and architect of its failed split, told partners he plans to retire next June, a year earlier than the planned expiration of his term. The Big Four accounting firm on Tuesday said that it will begin the search for Di Sibio’s successor later this summer. The move comes about two months after EY axed a planned split of its auditing and consulting firms amid opposition from a handful of U.S. partners and a group of retirees. Newsletter Sign-Up WSJ | CFO Journal The Morning Ledger provide
Carmine Di Sibio became EY’s global chairman and CEO in 2019.
Photo: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By
Carmine Di Sibio, the global chairman and chief executive of Ernst & Young and architect of its failed split, told partners he plans to retire next June, a year earlier than the planned expiration of his term.
The Big Four accounting firm on Tuesday said that it will begin the search for Di Sibio’s successor later this summer. The move comes about two months after EY axed a planned split of its auditing and consulting firms amid opposition from a handful of U.S. partners and a group of retirees.
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Subscribe NowDi Sibio, who joined the firm in 1985, became global chairman and CEO in 2019, leading the firm through the Covid-19 pandemic, a wave of accounting scandals at firms audited by the firm and preparations for a split. In November, his term was extended by two years until June 2025. He is serving in the role after reaching the age of 60, the firm’s mandatory retirement age for partners, in March.
Di Sibio told partners on a webcast Tuesday he was proud of the vision the firm set out for the split. “The courage that we displayed set the entire sector on a new course that will only become apparent in the years to come,” he said.
“Actions such as these will make us a better organization in the long term. Now it is time to usher in a new generation of leaders,” he added.
The firm had spent $600 million and over a year working on the split. The costs included $300 million of payments to investment banks and law firms and other outside costs, along with $300 million of partner time and other costs within the firm.
EY’s global revenue rose under Di Sibio’s term, as the consulting business comprised an increasingly larger portion of the total and the auditing business’s portion shrank. The firm said last month it expected to report $50 billion in global revenue for the year ending June 30, which would mark a 10% increase from the previous year. The figure would also represent a 34.4% rise from the year ended June 2020, the first full year with Di Sibio at the helm and including the early months of the pandemic.
—Alexander Saeedy contributed to this article.
Write to Mark Maurer at [email protected]
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