Deloitte moves to poach KPMG partners as Deal Street gets busy

Deloitte has moved to poach 15 partners from KPMG along with 130-150 professionals in the deal advisory space in one of the largest team movements among the Big Four in recent times. Rohit Berry, KPMG’s national head of deal advisory, is also moving to Deloitte along with Vivek Gupta, who heads M&A/private equity tax and family office practices for the firm.

Sources in the know though said negotiations are still ongoing as KPMG is trying hard to retain the talent that's leaving. In 2017, KPMG had merged erstwhile BMR Advisor’s transaction and risk advisory practice that included 12 partners and 100 professionals. Both Berry and Gupta were part of that team.

At the same time, Deloitte had acquired the tax arm of BMR. Deloitte and KPMG didn’t respond to the ET questionnaire.

This movement comes at a time when the Big Four are striking large and complex M&A investment banking deals. Sources said individual executive interviews had been going on for the past couple of months and the exact number of professionals moving is still not final but given the number of partners moving, 130-150 executives will likely shift.

A senior executive at Deloitte had in December 2022 told ET that for over 2-3 years now, Deloitte has been viewing M&A beyond just transaction advisory and traditional silos of corporate finance, diligence or valuations. “The intent of this end-to-end M&A offering is to leverage our firm-wide strength,” he said.

Sources at both firms said Rohit Berry and team will enhance the experience base and capabilities in achieving complex deals, cross-border transactions, M&A tax for large and mid-size companies across sectors. Incidentally, Rajeev Dimri, head of tax at KPMG, had moved from Deloitte in 2020.

Earlier, he was with BMR Advisors. As demand for M&A has grown, particularly in the rapidly expanding mid-market, top professional services firms have filled a market void by initially focusing on midand small-sized deals with lower fees and higher volume and then, in the last four years, going after larger deals