Deloitte China eyes more business from One Belt, One Road, Going Global strategies

Deloitte China must move away from its bread and butter auditing business and strengthen its offerings in sectors like advisory services to cash in on the growing opportunities from China’s One Belt, One Road and Going Global strategies, according to a top company official.

“Going forward, there will be a huge demand for consultancy services like tax advisory services, mergers and acquisitions services, debt restructuring and other infrastructure investment services. Demand will continue to increase with the ‘One Belt, One Road’ and the ‘Going Global’ strategies,” Philip Tsai Wing-chung, the newly appointed chairman of Deloitte China said in an exclusive interview to the South China Morning Post.

Tsai took the helm at Deloitte China from Clement Hung, who has retired, and will be responsible for the mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau operations of the accounting firm.

The 57-year old Tsai has over three decades of experience in Deloitte and was auditor for several blue chips, such as China Merchants Group, mainly for their initial public offering and annual financial reports.

According to Tsai, auditing has been the firm’s mainstay in China for the past 20 years, driven largely by the growing number of mainland companies wanting to list their shares in Hong Kong. But this has changed in recent years, he said.

Advisory services are already becoming a lucrative business for Deloitte China and generates roughly the same amount of revenue as auditing. That is a marked difference from the trend five years ago, when auditing was 70 per cent of the revenue and only 30 per cent came from advisory work.