A. F. Ferguson & Co.

A.F. Ferguson & Co. is a Pakistani accounting firm founded in what was then British India in 1893.

India

A.F. Ferguson & Co., which was the oldest accounting firm in India, joined Deloitte in 2004.[1] Mukund Dharmadhikari, senior partner of the firm, became joint managing partner of Deloitte Haskins & Sells India.

Pakistan

In Pakistan, the firm has 44 partners and over 1,700 staff. It is the oldest and one of the largest professional accounting firms in Pakistan, operating in three metropolitan cities: Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. The firm also has an office in Kabul, Afghanistan. A.F. Ferguson & Co. operates under international membership of PricewaterhouseCoopers and is also known internationally as PricewaterhouseCoopers Pakistan (PwC Pakistan).

Services

The firm offers professional services chiefly in the fields of accounting, auditing, assurance services, taxes, transaction advisory, risk advisory services, sales and purchase agreements, and human resource consulting. Internally, the firm is organized along two separate service lines: Assurance and Business Advisory Services (ABAS) and Tax and Legal Services (TLS), which are equally split into eight sections. The firm's clientele includes leading groups and companies within financial and non-financial sectors.

Staffing

The firm currently employs nearly 1,700 people: partners, senior managers, managers, assistant managers, and professional trainees. It is currently headed by Syed Muhammad Shabbar Zaidi.

History

The origins of the firm go back to 1893. Mr. Alexander Fletcher Ferguson (A. F. Ferguson), a chartered accountant from Scotland, came to Bombay in 1889 as chief accountant in the merchant firm Ritchie Stewart & Co., (later to become Forbes Forbes Campbell & Co. (Private) Limited). In 1893, he began his practice and was the first British Chartered Accountant to do so in this part of the world. Mr. P. G. Irvine, previously an assistant, became a partner in 1898 and the name of the firm was changed to 'Ferguson & Irvine'. In 1902, owing to the ill-health of Mr. Irvine, the partnership was dissolved and the firm became 'A. F. Ferguson & Co.', with Messrs A. F. Ferguson and W. Turner Green as partners. The firm prospered in Bombay and in 1908, an office was opened in Karachi. Mr. A. F. Ferguson returned to the United Kingdom in 1912 and commenced his practice in London.

The Karachi office was opened on 20 March 1908.

The firm operated in the Persian Gulf between 1910 and 1924. The Lahore office opened in 1926.

In August 1947, Pakistan was separated from India.

In 1952, the Pakistani practice was split off from the firm. The Pakistani firm took over the Karachi and Lahore branches. The Indian firm continued to practice in India under the same name.

The Rawalpindi branch was upgraded to an independent office in November 1990 and an office was also opened in Islamabad in late 1992. In 1993, the operations of the Rawalpindi office were transferred to the Islamabad office. In 2006, A. F. Ferguson & Co. opened a branch in Kabul, Afghanistan.

References
  1. "Its Official: Ferguson To Merge With Deloitte". The Financial Express. 17 August 2004. Retrieved 7 November 2019.
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