The four largest accounting firms in the world are planning to increase their number of staff in China.
　　
　　The four firms include PriceWaterhouseCooper, Deloittee, KPMG, and Ernst & Young. All together, this year these firms plan to boost their staff numbers in China by more than 20 percent.
　　
　　The New York-based Wall Street Journal attributed the high demand for international accounting expertise in China to various reasons. First, is the desire for China’s big state-owned companies to be listed overseas; second, are the new accounting standards that smaller companies are adopting; and finally is the steady growth that the Chinese branches of foreign companies have seen.
　　
　　Reports say that the largest firm, PwC, has aimed to recruit 1,550 graduates and 500-700 experienced professionals to its Hong Kong and Chinese mainland operations.
　　
　　Deloitte, which employs 4,960 people across the mainland and Hong Kong, wants to hire 1,500 new staff by the middle of next year.
　　
　　KPMG aims to supplement its current 4,500 staff members with 1,000 graduates and 300 senior people this year.
　　
　　And Ernst & Young plans to raise its staff of 3,500 in the Chinese mainland to 4,300.
　　
　　However, because China has a limited pool of qualified accounting talents, the big four companies will likely compete for the same group of candidates, which may not be good news for the recruiting firms.
　　
　　Moreover, banking corporations will also be trying to attract similarly qualified personnel; and normally they offer higher salaries than accounting firms.
　　
　　Experts have pointed out that the lack of qualified personnel in the country hinders the efforts by some Chinese companies to go public overseas.
　　
　　Stephen Taylor, partner at Deloitte in Hong Kong, told the Wall Street Journal that his company has become very selective in their work. They have had to reject working orders for initial public offerings (IPOs) and mergers & acquisitions (M & A) because they just don’t have enough staff members to take on such projects.