EY vote postponed.

Voting by EY’s UK and US partners on a radical plan to break up the Big Four accounting firm is set to be delayed to next year as its leaders try to hammer out legal documents governing how the split will work. The separation of the audit and consulting businesses, proposed by EY’s global bosses in September, requires the backing of its 13,000 partners in country-by-country votes. Leaders at EY were now saying openly that the UK partner vote would not take place until the first quarter of 2023, one of the people said. Partners were told this week that global boss Carmine Di Sibio, whose four-year term was due to expire in June, had been handed a two-year extension allowing him to continue running the firm until the split was complete.

Many staff in the 365,000-person firm still do not know which organisation they will be assigned to because the audit business will retain some experts in areas such as tax valuation to assist with checking financial statements and to rebuild the audit firm’s advisory practice. While the headline points have been agreed, negotiations over several complicated issues have not been completed, a person familiar with the matter said. The person added that EY’s leaders still expect the final member firm votes to be completed in February or early March. In addition, they have pencilled in a US initial public offering of the consulting business by the end of 2023.

The firm was making progress towards partner votes. Still, the process was «really complex», the person familiar with the matter said, adding that bosses had to «balance speed and execution» while still running the business. EY had also planned to appoint leaders for the two firms before votes took place, but the positions have still not been filled.

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