Grant Thornton has laid off approximately 300 employees, or about 3% of its staff, mostly in the advisory and tax business lines.
The layoffs, first reported in The Wall Street Journal, came as a result of declining demand for those services. A spokesperson for the Chicago-based Top 10 Firm confirmed the layoffs.
“We’re operating with strong momentum as we near the end of our business year, and are making targeted staffing adjustments so we can invest in higher-growth areas of the business to even better serve our clients,” said the firm in a statement. “A slowing economy and pockets of underutilization have prompted these staffing changes. We value the contributions of all team members and are providing severance benefits and professional outplacement services to help affected professionals transition to new opportunities.”
Grant Thornton CEO Seth Siegel told a town hall meeting earlier this month that the firm was seeing softening demand in some of its business divisions, according to the WSJ.
Other firms have also been cutting back in recent months, including Ernst & Young, which laid off 3,000 employees in the U.S. in April, mostly on the consulting side, after it called off plans to split the consulting and audit sides of the global network, as well as KPMG, which laid off nearly 700 people in its advisory business, or close to 2% of its staff, in February.
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