This decision comes shortly after the collapse of Project Everest, the big four firm’s plan to separate its audit and consulting businesses to avoid conflicts of interest. Despite this timing, EY maintains that the job cuts are unrelated to the failed project, which had consumed over a year of work and cost the firm more than $600 million (c.£482m).

The redundancies represent approximately 5% of EY’s American workforce. EY’s job cuts are more significant than those recently announced by other consulting firms such as KPMG, Accenture, and McKinsey, the Financial Times reports.