KPMG has declined to comment on reports it is cutting jobs in China because of the economic slowdown.

An industry source said KPMG, one of the big-four accounting firms, was making redundancies at its auditing service offices in Shanghai. The layoffs were mainly junior employees or those with less than five years' experience, the source said.

Employees deemed to have performed poorly will be the first to lose their jobs, the source added.

Another source in Beijing said a similar redundancy round was being undertaken in KPMG's Beijing office and another round was likely in December.

The total scale of the firm's redundancy plan in China is unknown. KPMG declined to comment on the issue yesterday.

The big-four accounting firms already have a higher turnover rate than other industries.

Redundancies are rare in the industry in China, which has seen high growth in recent years with booming initial public offerings.

Ernst & Young, another of the big-four, said last week that it didn't rule out salary cuts and job losses if the slowdown in the economy got worse.

Accounting firms are redeploying staff with the shrinking of IPOs and shifting emphasis to mergers and acquisition services and tax services.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is to cut salaries in its Singapore office but no such move has been announced in China.

Ernst & Young, PwC and Deloitte bosses say they expect slower growth in China over the next few years. However, it still stood out as a market with higher growth when compared to the West.

(Shanghai Daily November 25, 2008)