Ernst & Young to move energy business to Bahrain

Ernst & Young will be moving its world energy headquarters from Houston, Texas to Bahrain, and is looking to hire more people across the region, the company’s chief executive told Arabian Business on Monday.

“We’ve realized that when you look at the importance of the Gulf region to the world energy business, we wanted a headquarter right here in the region,” James Turley, chairman and chief executive, said in an interview in Abu Dhabi.

“It’s going to be in Bahrain. We thought that would be a central post, convenient also to get to Saudi.”

He declined to say how many employees would be based at the new centre or when the move would take place.

Bahrain has been pitching itself to international companies as a business friendly, low cost destination from which to base regional operations.

Inflation in the relatively energy-poor kingdom never reached the soaring heights of some of its neighbouring economies during the latest oil boom, and local participation in the workforce is higher than in most other Gulf states.

Turley said that Ernst & Young’s Gulf businesses had proved resilient to the economic downturn.

“We’re seeing the importance of continuing to invest…adding people, adding partners and adding specialized talent,” he said.

The company has had to reshuffle some staff but said there have been no redundancies as a consequence of the slowdown.

“Sometimes when you have the business slowing down, you have the flexibility of moving people to other businesses,” added Ahmed Al-Aiban, chairman and chief executive of the Middle East business, who also attended the interview.

Any redundancies had been “not abnormal, just normal turnover”, he added.

Ernst & Young is one of the largest privately held companies in the US.

It has four main service lines: assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services, which together employ around 135,000 people.

The company is one of the world’s “Big Four” auditors, along with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte and KPMG.