>Are they basically franchises? Is there some uber-partner at the global hq collecting massive commissions? Yes and no. In practice, each "country firm" (such

>Are they basically franchises? Is there some uber-partner at the global hq collecting massive commissions? Yes and no. In practice, each "country firm" (such as the PwC US firm) operate as individual companies with their own leadership team that, while they don't have the typical CxO titles, they have the same roles. Tim Ryan is basically the CEO of PwC US, for example, and PwC UK is a different company with a different CEO. Internationally there is also an umbrella organization that helps coordinate really high level stuff like branding (since all the country organizations share the same branding), internal IT strategy (such as getting everyone to use the same productivity tools to make it easier for cross-firm collaboration), etc. The individual companies reap benefits from this coordination because of the singular, strengthened brand, culture, methodology etc. So in that way it sort of is like a franchise. But that international organization doesn't have much to do with the day-to-day in-country operations or decisions about specific audits/projects. That would be the responsibility of the local partners/leadership team.