The war in Ukraine is also forcing the big accounting and consulting firms to act.

The four major global accounting firms Deloitte , KPMG , PWC and EY - the so-called "Big Four" - have all announced plans to divest their Russian operations.

So far, KPMG has 4,500 employees in Russia and Belarus together, Deloitte 3,000, PWC estimates the number of its employees in Russia at 3,700, EY at 4,700.

Tillman Neuscheler

Editor in Business.

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Because the auditing companies are not organized as hierarchically structured groups, but as global networks of independent national companies, the previous Russian member companies are excluded from the networks of the respective auditing companies and therefore no longer have access to internal IT systems.

At least in part, the national companies will probably continue to work under the new flag for local customers.

However, they may no longer appear under the respective brand names.

Past clients of PWC include Sberbank and the oil company Gazprom.

The big management consultants are also withdrawing

After brief hesitation, a number of large management consultancies are also reducing their business in Russia.

The world's largest consulting firm Accenture announced last week that it would completely discontinue business in Russia.

"Accenture stands by the Ukrainian people," the company said in a statement. "We thank our nearly 2,300 colleagues in Russia for their commitment and service to Accenture over the years." The consulting firm Boston Consulting Group , Roland Berger and Bain also announced that they would stop working for Russian companies.

The head of management consultancy McKinsey, Bob Sternfels, had to clarify his first statement: Last week he expressed his dismay at the conflict on Linkedin and announced that McKinsey would no longer work for state agencies in Russia.

Because it was left open whether McKinsey would continue to advise state-controlled Russian companies, internal protests hailed.

Sternfels felt compelled to clarify: "We will stop existing work with state-controlled companies," he said.

In addition, McKinsey will no longer accept any new business in Russia, after the completion of the current projects all customer service in Russia will be discontinued.

However, many consulting firms do not want to finally close their offices in Moscow just yet.

When asked, the consulting firm Capgemini said that they only work for international companies in Russia, but not for Russian organizations.