The Economic Times’ reporter Rita Bhattacharyya highlighted the rise of younger workers achieving the prestigious partner title at “The Big 4,” the four largest international accounting and professional services firms, due to the firms’ explosive growth and competition to retain talent in the competitive Indian and MENA markets.
Part of this rise in younger partners is due to the growth of non-equity partners (NEPs) – different from traditional partners who have been expected to invest capital in the firm in exchange for a share of profit.
“Over the past few years, the Big 4 lost a lot of talent to corporates and startups where the path to the C-Suite was accelerating,” explains Debu Mishra, partner and head advisory APAC & MENA at True Search. “This has increased the prevalence of non-equity partners (NEP)… to serve as a retention tool while not diluting the partnership pool of equity partners. This, in turn, has reduced the average time to the partner title.”
He continued, “Making partners faster is both an outcome of higher performance, and in turn, improves overall performance of the firm.”