Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional service firms in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers . Ernst & Young is a global organization of member firms in more than 140 countries, headquartered in London, UK. It was ranked by Forbes magazine as the 9th largest private company in the United States in 2010. Ernst & Young is the result of a series of mergers of ancestor organizations. The oldest originating partnership was founded in 1849 in England as Harding & Pullein. In that year the firm was... joined by Frederick Whinney. He was made a partner in 1859 and with his sons in the business it was renamed Whinney Smith & Whinney in 1894. In 1903, the firm of Ernst & Ernst was established in Cleveland by Alwin C. Ernst and his brother Theodore and in 1906 Arthur Young & Co. was set up by the Scotsman Arthur Young in Chicago. As early as 1924 these American firms allied with prominent British firms, Young with Broads Paterson & Co. and Ernst with Whinney Smith & Whinney. In 1979 this led to the formation of Anglo-American Ernst & Whinney, creating the fourth largest accountancy firm in the world.
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