来源：四大新鲜事儿
2025年4月24日，《金融时报》报道，前安永（EY）英国首席执行官Steve Varley及普华永道（PwC）英国前首席运营官Marissa Thomas宣布创立一家新会计咨询公司，并获私募股权支持，誓言从四大会计师事务所争夺英国客户与合伙人。
这家名为Unity Advisory的新公司已悄然启动招聘，计划于6月正式成立。公司由Steve Varley担任董事长，他曾于2011至2020年执掌安永英国。这家精品咨询公司将获得私募股权公司Warburg Pincus最高3亿美元的资金支持。Varley于2023年底离开安永，现任律所DWF集团董事长（该律所亦有私募支持）。
Steve Varley
Unity首席执行官将由Marissa Thomas出任。Thomas在普华永道任职31年，曾领导英国并购咨询及税务部门，后升任首席运营官。她曾被广泛视为2023年高级合伙人的热门人选，但最终未进入合伙人投票的候选名单，该职位由Marco Amitrano获得。
Marissa Thomas
二人将新公司定位为“四大替代方案”，旨在为英国首席财务官（CFO）提供税务、会计、科技咨询及并购建议，同时避免原东家常受诟病的利益冲突问题。Unity不开展审计业务——四大合伙人常抱怨审计业务招致严格监管审查及复杂合规流程。
Steve Varley向《金融时报》表示：“CFO们愿意接受新选择。四大是优秀的服务提供商，但人们需要一种极度以客户为中心、行政成本极低、以AI而非传统基础设施驱动且无利益冲突的方案。”
Warburg Pincus最高3亿美元的支持凸显了财务投资者对专业服务领域日益增长的影响力——该领域曾长期由合伙人所有制主导。
2023年，致同英国（Grant Thornton UK）将多数股权出售给私募公司Cinven，此前海外会计师事务所已掀起类似交易浪潮。2019年，Warburg Pincus曾支持保险经纪元老Steve Mc Gill创立独立专业风险保险公司。
Steve Varley表示：“合伙制有许多优势，但其中一点不足是难以进行中长期投资。”
Thomas表示，Unity将招募有四大背景的员工（包括已转行至企业的人员），目标客户为年收入5亿至15亿英镑的中型企业，尤其是私募支持的企业。
她指出，新公司较低的中心成本结构及无审计客户负担将支持“差异化收费模式”，例如更高比例的绩效挂钩费用，或通过效率提升建议实现“价值共享”。
Warburg Pincus董事总经理David Reis表示，Unity将是“挑战CFO及财务团队服务现状的新型平台”，且存在“颠覆市场的重大机遇”。
Steve Varley在领英中的履历如下：
Marissa Thomas在领英中的履历如下：
原文报告如下：
The former UK head of EY and PwC’s former chief operating officer are launching a rival accounting and consulting firm with backing from private equity, vowing to peel off British clients and partners from the Big Four.
The new venture, Unity Advisory, has quietly begun recruiting for a launch expected by June, under the chairmanship of Steve Varley, who ran EY for nine years until 2020. The boutique advisory firm will be backed by as much as $300mn from Warburg Pincus, the private equity group.
Unity’s chief executive will be Marissa Thomas, who was one of the most senior female UK executives at PwC until last year, when she was passed over for the role of senior partner. She left the firm in February.
The pair are pitching their new venture as an alternative to the Big Four that can offer tax and accounting services, technology consulting and mergers and acquisition advice to chief financial officers in the UK, with none of the conflict of interest worries that plague their former firms. Unity will not have an audit business, which Big Four partners often complain triggers heavy regulatory scrutiny and can tie them up with complicated compliance procedures.
“CFOs are open to a new proposition,” Varley told the Financial Times. “The Big Four are a classy bunch of service providers, but people are looking for a proposition that is super client-centric, has really low administrative cost, is AI-led rather than based on legacy infrastructure and, crucially, has no conflicts.”
Warburg Pincus’s backing of up to $300mn to build out the firm underscores the growing influence of financial investors in a professional services sector that used to be dominated by partner-owned business models.
Grant Thornton UK last year sold a majority stake to the private equity group Cinven, following a wave of similar deals for accounting firms overseas. In 2019, Warburg Pincus backed veteran insurance broker Steve McGill in creating an independent speciality risk insurance business.
“Partnerships have a lot of advantages,” Varley said, “but one of the things they don’t do well is medium to long-term investment.”
Varley left EY at the end of 2023 and is chair of the law firm DWF Group, which also has private equity backing. Thomas spent 31 years at PwC, running its UK M&A advisory business and its tax unit before becoming chief operating officer. She was widely tipped internally as a contender for the senior partner role that went last year to Marco Amitrano but failed to reach the shortlist of candidates put to a partner vote.
Thomas said Unity would be hiring staff with Big Four experience, including those who have left those firms for jobs in industry, and targeting mid-size corporate clients with revenues in the £500mn-£1.5bn range, particularly those backed by private equity.
The new firm’s lower central cost base and the absence of audit clients would allow “different fee models”, such as a larger proportion of performance-based fees or “value sharing” from advising on efficiency gains, she said.
David Reis, Warburg Pincus managing director, said Unity would be “a new kind of platform that challenges the status quo in how CFOs and finance teams are serviced”, and that there was “substantial market opportunity for disruption”.
（转自：四大新鲜事儿）