PricewaterhouseCoopers firms link up across the region
Nine member firms of PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Caribbean have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will allow them to collaborate more closely and combine resources in servicing local, regional and international clients across the region.
The MOU links the skills, expertise and industry knowledge of approximately 79 partners and 1375 staff located in 15 countries in the English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. These countries are: Antigua, Aruba, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Bonaire, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Maarten, Trinidad & Tobago, and the Turks & Caicos Islands.
“In effect, we are coming together as successful individual practices to create a powerful regional network – one with far greater horsepower than any other professional services provider in the Caribbean,” says Andrew Marryshow, senior partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers East Caribbean, which has offices in Barbados, Antigua, Grenada, St. Kitts and St. Lucia.
However, Marryshow stresses that the memorandum will not create a single firm with a single management structure. Although there will be a regional leadership team to ensure a high level of regional coordination, each firm remains a separate legal entity with independent management.
“We believe that professional services firms can be far more flexible, decisive and responsive to the needs of clients by being part of a well-connected network, rather than by forming one large, centrally managed firm,” he says. “Client service leadership should remain in the home territory of each client, and centrally managed firms tend to overlook this.”
Marryshow says the memorandum clarifies how the firms will work together to provide seamless service to shared clients such as the large, pan-Caribbean companies that continue to expand throughout the region.
“For many years, the PwC firms in the Caribbean have been collaborating in one way or another to service clients, but now we must be able to do it consistently and on a much larger scale,” he says. “Such is the level of service that big companies in the region now expect, and we must provide it.”
Marryshow says the tightly knit regional network that is being created by the memorandum is a model that PricewaterhouseCoopers is embracing the world over.
“Globally, throughout the organization, it has become increasingly clear that the resources available within such a network hugely enhance our ability to create value for our clients,” he says. “Ultimately, we are seeking to optimize our client service delivery through greater connectivity of our people – not only within the natural economic region of the wider Caribbean, but between the Caribbean and other regions of the world as well.”
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