John Parkhouse, CEO of PwC Luxembourg on the performance,  “Despite the turmoil we have seen in recent months, we have witnessed very strong growth across all our businesses – posting a remarkable 11% growth in our turnover,  taking our firm comfortably past the half a billion mark (EUR 543M), and representing EUR 480M in net revenue. I would like to thank our clients for their continued trust in our services, our people for their passion and commitment and the broader community for their support and recognition of what we try to bring to our society. Never has it  been more important for business, policy makers and society as a whole to work together on providing the stability and access to opportunities which are so important to  us all.

An area where we placed considerable effort last year, and where we will do so again this year, concerns the recruitment and retention of talent.  From listening carefully to our People, we identified four distinct priorities in which we invested: Healthy Environment,  Competitive Compensation

Talent Management and Differentiated Careers. It goes without saying that without a successful and sustainable business nothing would be possible and one of the key elements to make that happen is a sustainable workforce. This is why our People remain a core focus and why we work on building a meaningful journey for them allowing for pro-bono work, professional associations’ membership and community engagements.”

Prosperity – Business Review

Our financial year, which spanned from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022, was a very special year that started with a shift in the pandemic, where modern medicine allowed for a new normality and a feeling of optimism. Turbulent events however began to impact us mostly in the second half of our financial year, with a growing energy crisis and disrupted supply chains, as well as a very strong core inflation, especially in the US.

As a professional services firm in Luxembourg, we see our 11% increase in our net revenue as a major achievement, particularly in a time of growing turbulence, witness of the reach of our services on local clients, subsidiaries of international groups, as well beyond the local market.

FY22 continued to be marked by three major business trends:

• Increase in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) regulation intensity
• Significant market growth in ‘Alternatives’ and – linked to that – Managed Services
• A strong dynamic in digital transformation

Industries

We support our clients with services in five major industries: Alternatives, Asset and Wealth Management (AWM), Banking, Insurance and Industry & Public Sector (IPS):

• Alternatives: +23.2% (% of turnover = 43.0%)
• Asset and Wealth Management: +0.4% (% of turnover = 21.8%)
• Banking and Capital Markets: +4.6% (% of turnover = 11.4%)
• Insurance: -0.6% (% of turnover = 3.3%)
• Industry and Public Sector: +5.3% (% of turnover = 20.5%)

Our Core business ⁠- Advisory: +13.9% (% of turnover = 21.5%)  

Our Advisory practice had a very successful year, reporting a 13.9% growth to EUR 116.5M, and was an important contributor to the overall growth of PwC Luxembourg. This performance reflects the attractiveness of our services and their relevance to clients’ needs in uncertain times as well as a constantly evolving and attracting talent strategy.

Our Core Business⁠ – Assurance: +10.6% (% of turnover = 50.1%)

FY22 has been another very strong year for our Assurance practice with a growth of 10.6% to EUR 272.4M. As with the rest of the firm, the lion’s share of this growth is attributable to the Alternatives industry. It should, however, be noted that all other industries, except for Insurance (as expected due to mandatory audit firms rotation in both 2021 and 2022), have also experienced a robust level of growth.

Our Core Business – Tax: +9.0% (% of turnover = 28.4%)

 In FY22, turnover from our Tax Services grew by more than 9% to EUR 154.4M. The solid growth is equally spread over all of our Tax Services. The Tax Services practice continues to be recognised as the leading provider of consulting, compliance and managed services in Luxembourg, in terms of size, turnover and services scope.

Highlights from the other WEF-IBC pillars

This is the third year that PwC Luxembourg has aligned its materiality matrix to the work performed by the World Economic Forum (WEF),with the support of the International Business Council (IBC) and the Big Four, a set of common metrics that rest at the heart of long-term value creation, (and the seventh of reporting in this area)

Adopting those universal standards and disclosures enables us to unlock long-term value through greater transparency, accountability, and business transformation. The WEF-IBC framework includes 21 core and 34 expanded metrics that define the most important sustainability issues businesses should address. In 2021, we identified the 13 Ambitions that are a priority to us.

The year 2022 was about continuing in setting ambitious and collective actions. Our team at PwC Luxembourg established the frameworks, key performance indicators (KPIs) and actions necessary to fulfil our commitment to our 13 Ambitions.

People

Our People are a key success factor in building a prosperous future at PwC Luxembourg. With 3,100 employees from 85 countries, we are the largest professional services firm in the country. A strong workforce that is thriving and healthy is important for our growth. To reach this, our ambition is to create a diverse and inclusive environment that encourages career advancement and engagement for all our People. In FY22, we increased by 5% the gender diversity for each management level to achieve a 40-60 gender balance. Furthermore, we have seen a significant increase (more than 5%) in our Well-being and Flexibility index, meaning our flexibility measures and programmes provided to our People are unique in the market.

Planet

Climate change is undeniably the biggest business and social challenge of the current century and the business community has a pivotal role to play in making positive change. Following PwC global network’s ambitious Net Zero 2030 Commitment, we continued this year to transform our firm’s business model by decarbonising our operations and value chain while also engaging with clients and suppliers to meet these ambitions.

Principles of Governance

Governance is the foundation of how we build that trust and continued long-term value with our stakeholders. We believe accountability, responsibility and stewardship principles are important governing values. They ensure that we execute our ambitions for the business, our clients, stakeholders, the planet, and society. In FY22, the SUSTAIN@PwC committee continued to execute on the firm’s sustainability strategy and ambitions.

You can find PwC’s complete annual review 2022 here.