KPMG and EY have quietly been removing UK partners from their equity partnerships and offering them "salaried partner" roles instead, in a break from the accounting industry's traditional job-for-life model, several sources told the Financial Times. Equity partners — the senior practitioners who own the firm and share its profits — typically kept that status until mandatory retirement age; being "retired" into a salaried role is a new form of "departnering".
At KPMG, where average equity partner pay last year was 880,000 pounds, some partners were told they would be moved into a salaried rung introduced in recent years. Under CEO Jon Holt, appointed in 2021, KPMG has reallocated the "units" that determine each equity partner's share of profits, placing less weight on tenure and more on bringing in business. An internal shorthand — "Huncs", for high-units-no-clients — describes partners with large equity stakes and few active clients. Several of those, sources say, "have been let go recently". KPMG profit per partner now outperforms PwC and EY for the first time in more than a decade.
The trend is wider. Big Four equity partner promotions hit a five-year low in 2025. EY has also demoted a small number of equity partners since introducing its salaried rung in 2022. KPMG says it will have created more than 200 new partnership roles over a two-year period (salaried plus equity). The shift mirrors practices in law firms and Goldman Sachs: concentrate profit among top performers, and push out those who underperform — even if a formal "salaried partner" title softens the message. Source: Financial Times, 24 April 2026, Ellesheva Kissin.