Key facts
- Jeff Soar, a former EY executive, has launched WTS UK, a new tax advisory firm.
- The firm is backed by private capital group EQT Partners, which is providing over €500 million in funding.
- WTS UK aims to directly compete with the Big Four (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC) in the UK tax market.
- The company plans to hire 100 partners within five years and utilize a leaner operational model.
- WTS UK intends to leverage AI and a more agile structure to offer competitive pricing.
A new tax advisory firm, WTS UK, has launched with the explicit goal of challenging the dominance of the Big Four accounting firms in the United Kingdom. Led by Jeff Soar, who previously headed EY's global law business, the venture is backed by significant private capital from EQT Partners, a major European investment group.
WTS UK plans to differentiate itself by adopting a leaner operational model, employing a higher ratio of partners to staff and eschewing trainees. This structure, combined with a strategic focus on artificial intelligence, is intended to allow WTS UK to offer more competitive pricing than its established rivals. Soar believes that AI's rule-based and data-driven nature makes it particularly well-suited for the tax profession, positioning WTS UK as an agile player ready to capitalize on technological disruption.
The Big Four firms—Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC—currently hold approximately 80% of the UK's £5.6 billion tax services market. However, Soar suggests that recent events, such as EY's aborted Project Everest, have highlighted potential challenges within the Big Four's integrated business models, creating an opening for challengers. The move by WTS UK also reflects a broader trend of increased private equity investment in the professional services sector, which has historically been dominated by partner-owned structures.