KPMG Merger Creating ‘Nervousness’

The merger of KPMG’s UK and German firms is creating nervousness because the partners from the two divisions have very different approaches to conducting business, according to reports.

German partners address one another as ‘Herr’ rather than using first-name terms even with colleagues they’ve known for 20 years.

And while English partners apparently take some trouble to phrase criticism more delicately, the Germans are inclined to speak their mind.

The merger will create Europe’s largest accountancy firm with revenues of more than £2bn a year and will take effect in October.

This is all they could come up with? Different forms of address and ways of handling performance issues? There is a lot of history here. I’ve spoken about it in much more detail in my first post.