Message from local Senior Partner

In the beginning of 2020 while all estimations for the world economic growth rate was around at least 3%, due to pandemic almost every country ended up with an economic shrink and when 2020 finally came to an end world economic growth contracted by 3,5%. Turkish economy has also been deeply affected from the pandemic and got its share by achieving only 1,8% growth in 2020, yet being optimistic for 2021 to remain in positive growth numbers. KPMG Turkey has been impacted from the pandemic although achieved 24% growth in local currency. Considering the common shock experienced by most of the firms in 2020, KPMG Turkey has successfully managed to grow in this tough year, though our expectations from 2020 were much higher than this because of the heavy investments made in 2019 and early 2020.

KPMG Turkey has made two influential inorganic growth moves to strengthen Tax and Advisory practices starting with 2019. First one was the merger with Erdikler YMM which was a reputable local sworn Tax firm. Approximately 120 employees joined KPMG Turkey with Erdikler merger including six Tax partners. The merger was successfully carried out in early 2019 and as one Tax practice, KPMG Tax has served its clients throughout the pandemic and delivered desired outcomes with utmost efforts.

The second inorganic growth initiative was for expanding Advisory practice with new partners and services which was started by the end of 2019 and continued partially in 2020. By the end of 2020 KPMG Turkey has gained 80 new advisors including 5 partners from new service lines of Technology, Mergers & Acquisition and Capital Debt Advisory; as well as strengthened services such as Transaction Services and Forensic. Throughout all new and expanded services in Advisory, Technology services should be highlighted more in 2020. As the world emerges from the pandemic, demand for technology-enabled professional services is strong and set to get stronger. Therefore in 2020 we enriched our technology solutions and helped our clients in those areas of; digital transformation, data & analytics, technology enablement and cyber security.

In Audit we had a good year in 2020 acquiring new and credible clients in rotation process while taking Audit quality on top of our agenda on account of Audit Quality Transformation project. In addition to this project, we’re developing a globally consistent System of Quality Management (SoQM) that aligns with the International Standard of Quality Management (ISQM 1) coming into effect in 2022. This includes implementing controls that evolve our existing policies and procedures into a proactive approach for managing audit quality, to help us better respond to quality risks. Bu

Spending the year of 2019 as a preparation and integration year to with our new colleagues on our sides, we had further expectations from the year of 2020 in terms of returns on investments up until Covid-19 virus has landed in Turkey and took our aggressive growth ambitions relatively downwards. However, during an epidemic and economic crisis we are pleased to be able to provide our employees a safe place to work on remote conditions while keeping our clients pleased as much as we could with no interruption on delivery. With utmost efforts of my colleagues in these though times, we were able to grow in each of our business lines consecutively; 20% in Audit, 25% in Tax and 33% in Advisory in 2020.

Having strong connections with KPMG EMA and Global, we have adopted Global strategy and have been following collective priorities in order to uplift the KPMG brand collectively. We have been awarded the M&A advisor of the year by the Merger Market and granted to be amongst top employers by the Top Employers Institute. Last but not least we have been carbon neutral firm reducing and offsetting our emissions to zero through the use of I-RECs and carbon offsets in accordance with the Carbon Neutral Protocol in partnership with Natural Capital Partners.