Q: Big4 - Yearly salary increment

I saw some posts mentioning about partners earning 1 mil
Please dont mislead the young minds. There is only A FEW SENIOR PARTNERS and upper management that can do so , Most early 300-500 k , that too PB depends on portfolio and prestige of the clients.

How many managing partners can each form have that earns big 4? Once become partner, that is not the end of the road, its a whole new stressful road with many more internal ranks to climb

Secondly, correct me if im wrong but nowadays, most junior partners are merely salaried and not equity shareholders right based on what I read online. If they do become shareholder, u have to buy in " a huge sum", can take 1-2 years to earn back.

Partner is not so worth it as to reach the " million dollars salary club" is near impossible. Most just retire as a normal partner earning 500k / year

Pardon my autocorrect typos :

I saw some posts mentioning about partners earning 1 mil
Please don't mislead the young minds. There is only A FEW SENIOR PARTNERS and upper management that can do so , Most earn 300-500 k , that too PB depends on portfolio and prestige of the clients. In fact, a junior partner only makes 300k / year -> Do NOTE AUDITORS can do minimal investments , cant buy much shares/unit trusts in case they are auditing those firms or wish to audit in future. This is ALOT of potential investment income lost. Someone who started investing at age 20s with 5-8% returns wld alrdy have made way more from investments- money that auditors loose out on ( I wonder why no one complains about this white elephant )

How many managing partners can each firm have that earns millions? Once you become partner, that is not the end of the road, its a whole new stressful road with many more internal ranks to climb

Secondly, correct me if i'm wrong but nowadays, most junior partners are merely salaried and not equity shareholders right based on what I read online. If they do become shareholder, u have to buy in " a huge sum", can take 1-2 years to earn back.

Partner is not so worth it as to reach the " million dollars salary club" is near impossible. Most just retire as a normal partner earning 500k / year

Do NOTE AUDITORS can do minimal investments , cant buy much shares/unit trusts in case they are auditing those firms or wish to audit in future. This is ALOT of potential investment income lost. Someone who started investing at age 20s with 5-8% returns wld alrdy have made way more from investments- money that auditors loose out on ( I wonder why no one complains about this white elephant )

Auditors can only invest in property
Simply because they can't buy shares/unit trusts/REITs. If they do buy, have to declare and potentially excluded from these high profile projects in the future if opportunity arises

Most auditors I know hence, dont invest , cant even buy ILP. All they can buy is basic endowment and FDs

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Do NOTE AUDITORS can do minimal investments , cant buy much shares/unit trusts in case they are auditing those firms or wish to audit in future. This is ALOT of potential investment income lost. Someone who started investing at age 20s with 5-8% returns wld alrdy have made way more from investments- money that auditors loose out on ( I wonder why no one complains about this white elephant )

You are correct there are restricted shares which auditors are not allowed to buy due to independence requirements. Each firm maintains their own list and database which you have to check against before committing. And you also have to declare accordingly. Since there are only 4 members of Big4 (duh!) auditing a large part of the listed companies in Singapore- yes there is good chance what you might be wanting to buy is restricted. I wouldn't say 'minimal', just that you have to do a bit more homework when investing and can't do so freely/carefreely.

Why no one complains - umm because generally most of us only stay inside for 3 years? So any potential loss tends to be quite minimum. And when just starting to work, your initial capital is quite low? So the returns on available returns isn't much either. Lastly if you are willing to accept Big4 starting salary which is a bit lower than other MNCs/MA programs, it means you prioritize the learning experience and exposure more than the immediate financial gain anyway.

How do SMs in yellow get awarded projects?
How come my SM's team has 3 of their biggest clients? I wonder these projects was obtained? isit allocated by partners or maybe she was alrdy in that team as a junior?

I beg to differ. Say for example an SM trying to be partner who is in the form for say 14 years. Give you an example of yellow- well known and all over the internet that they audit apple-> This alrdy excluded the person from buying soo many ETFs as almost all big ETFs have apple, cannot buy s&p 500 ( returns are 8% per year ). Imagine the income lost out by this SM who cannot buy so many ETFs, most REITs also cannot.

These people dont realise the huge income they have lost out on. PITY , and to think they studied business modules

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Auditors can only invest in property
Simply because they can't buy shares/unit trusts/REITs. If they do buy, have to declare and potentially excluded from these high profile projects in the future if opportunity arises

Most auditors I know hence, dont invest , cant even buy ILP. All they can buy is basic endowment and FDs

Are you sure? I am an auditor and most of my auditor friends do invest. You just need to do your own due dilligence and look up for the stocks that you could invest. There are tons of stocks in the market and there are only some of the restricted shares that you couldnt buy (which doesnt really make up to the bulk of the stock market anyway).

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Exactly. Boomer partners in big 4 need to wake up and understand why local grads are shunning big 4 or just using big 4 as a stepping stone and not staying more than 2-3 years.Boomer partners haven't realised that there are many attractive alternative career options now with better work life balance and higher starting pay. They should also stop pretending to care about our mental heath when they are obsessed with revenue growth.

Gen Z will rather be self employed as influenza rather than slogging in your sweatshop.

Higher starting pay elsewhere available to the average accountancy grad? Wait long long la.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I beg to differ. Say for example an SM trying to be partner who is in the form for say 14 years. Give you an example of yellow- well known and all over the internet that they audit apple-> This alrdy excluded the person from buying soo many ETFs as almost all big ETFs have apple, cannot buy s&p 500 ( returns are 8% per year ). Imagine the income lost out by this SM who cannot buy so many ETFs, most REITs also cannot.

These people dont realise the huge income they have lost out on. PITY , and to think they studied business modules

If you wanna stay until SM, that’s on you. My post only about the average person who stay 3 years.