As our colleagues at Paperjam report, the financial results for the first half of 2019 were presented on Monday morning, showing a 4.21% growth, or €464.m turnover. Compare this to the 10.2% and 8% growth witnessed in 2017-18 and 2016-17, respectively. Also as of end-Q2 2019, the PwC Luxembourg workforce counted over 2,700 employees.

In his statement, CEO John Parkhouse attributed this slowdown to “a tougher year where we see the impacts of changing regulation and overall economic downturn hitting our results. In particular, the demise of German Tax Reporting for mutual funds and work related to MiFID II⁠--both areas where we have supported our clients with great success--were, even if planned for, a significant drag on our overall performance.”

As Paperjam reports, concerning the German mutual funds situation, tax leader Gerard Cops added that “among the Big 4, we had the most work at this level. We were therefore strongly impacted.”

Nevertheless, audit and insurance leader Marie-Elisa Roussel, stated that the audit and consulting segments continued to grow at 8% and 5%, respectively. 

In his message, Parkhouse added that globally, PwC is committing a minimum $3b investment over 4 years to upskill employees and drive tech across its communities.  

As part of its commitment to driving technology into the future, PwC Luxembourg is also set to open by early-2020 a European Open AI Lab which will collaborate with similar, already-existing labs in locations such as the US and Japan.