@David agreed it is smaller, but the combined worldwide PR income of WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic for instance at approx £2bn per year is still only about the same as PwC UK’s fee income and PwC’s global revenues are circa £18bn. So though the gap is smaller it is still pretty big.

@Ged I was aware of the chinese wall scenario, but this also occurs in accountancy firms where I found myself working in such a situation on a number of occasions. But it seems a little strange to me that such segregation and branding is deemed necessary for comms advice but not for financial to achieve the same end. Why the apparent implied lack of trust for following risk management procedures when it comes to work of this type?

Agree completely on the culture point, but again within the accountancy firms this exists as well. Accountancy firms are also like a federated collection of small/medium sized businesses under one banner each managed by a partner where the partner defines a lot of the culture of each business. In my time I worked in four different ones and there was a significant difference in culture in each depending on the work – audit, corporate finance, consultancy – and the client base – private sector, public sector. But they still saw the rationale for this federated umbrella brand.

Maybe ultimately the difference just reflects the lack of creativity of accountants! Well except for creative accounting of course but that’s a *whole* other thing!

I have often seen contracts where the client forbid you to work with a list of names that covered a couple of sheets of A4 paper in any other office worldwide.

Secondly different brands often hold different cultures and different offerings, for instance when I was client side there was no way on earth I would willingly work with Burson Marsteller, but I would happily work with Cohn & Wolfe. Both are fine agencies but one has a more starched collar, strategic but not very creative reputation and vibe. Same product offering on the surface, but very different values attached to it.