Everyone in international accounting and auditing has heard of the Big Four - but who claims to be No. 5?
Everyone in international accounting and auditing has heard of the Big Four firms – PwC, Deloitte Touche, Ernst & Young and KPMG.
So who claims to be No. 5, and who leads that firm in Ukraine?
Stand up, Alla Savchenko – head of BDO Ukraine, a tough competitor who has driven her company from humble beginnings. A quietly stylish woman in her 50s, Savchenko founded Balance-Audit in 1993 in Dnipropetrovsk, as the demand for accounting and auditing services was growing.
In 1997, Savchenko’s Balance-Audit became part of the international BDO network of accounting firms.
“From the start I imagined my company being big and international. I saw a glass office and young people speaking English, working for foreign companies. There was nothing around me like that, but I wanted it,” Savchenko said.
Things gradually came together. A woman from the U.S. Peace Corps showed up at her office and proposed free English lessons. Then she met some people from KPMG, who were on a trip from Germany to share knowledge of how a market economy works.
“In Ukraine at that time you had to deal with bags of cash, and surprisingly nobody wanted their lectures, but rather perceived the KPMG professionals as some kind of funny monkeys, clapping their hands after every word they said,” Savchenko recalled.
She managed to convince KPMG to take an employee of hers to Germany as an intern. The woman came back with some samples of auditing documents, which Balance-Audit started using intensively.
In the 1990s, audits were obligatory, but there were no unified standards. Savchenko began to look for partners abroad. In 1997, her firm – already with offices across Ukraine – became part of the BDO network.
From the start I imagined my company being big and international. I saw a glass office and young people speaking English, working for foreign companies. There was nothing around me like that, but I wanted it.
– Alla Savchenko, head of BDO Ukraine
“I remember observing a queue of audit clients every morning.
We had to deal with this unmanageable demand. And we did: We opened new branches, started meeting our clients in their offices and created a separate department to sign contracts,” she said.
Savchenko worked hard on community activities to boost her company’s profile, publishing a newspaper for accountants and writing a blog. She has also worked hard on her own skills, especially her English.
Around three-quarters of BDO’s work in Ukraine is auditing. The majority of its 150 clients are local companies.
Among them are many agriculture companies, such as Milkiland and KSG Agro, which pulled in $77 million and $40 million respectively in recent initial public offerings on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
Around 30 percent of BDO revenue comes from auditing 10 state-owned companies, including oil-transit company Ukrtransnafta and three sea ports – Odesa, Illychivsk and Mariupol.
After the company won a Hr 12 million contract this year with state-owned Naftogaz, Savchenko said Big Four competitors questioned why BDO had been chosen.
Alexandra Kuzhel, a politician and friend of Savchenko’s, said Savchenko had always played fair and refused to a governmental job, even though it could have helped her get state contracts.
“When I was working as head of the state regulatory committee and asked her to be my deputy, she refused,” Kuzhel said.
Savchenko said BDO has an estimated 5 percent share of Ukraine’s auditing and consulting market, with an annual turnover of 5 million euros.
Its revenues grew 20.5 percent in 2010 and are expected to grow by 15 percent this year, she added.
And she is not resting. The company is moving into consulting and auditing in the promising energy efficiency and IT sectors.
Kyiv Post staff writer Kateryna Panova can be reached at [email protected].
