This decision, revealed in an email to partners and directors, comes amidst “challenging market conditions” in the UK’s professional services sector, Financial Times reports.

The firm’s tax and legal division’s chief operating officer, Sarah Humphreys, cited sluggish demand and a slowdown in mergers and acquisitions activity as contributing factors. The email indicated that further cost-cutting reviews are underway, encompassing recruitment agency costs, licence fees, bad debts, and global recharges.

Despite these challenges, Deloitte’s UK equity partners still earned an average of over £1 million in the year ending May 2024, making it the only Big Four firm to surpass this threshold. However, the firm has made over 1,000 redundancies since September 2023 and pushed out around 250 underperforming advisory staff.

The cost-cutting efforts are part of a broader trend in the UK consulting sector, with forecasts indicating a 2% contraction in the financial services consulting market in 2024. The Big Four firm has also undergone a global restructuring, reducing its main business units to four.

Deloitte stated that it is carefully managing costs to meet client needs and invest in its firm and people.