PwC Celebrates 100 Years in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- PwC US is celebrating 100 years in Los Angeles -- and all 1,400 of the firm's local partners and staff are getting involved to give back to the community.  To honor the centennial, PwC's LA office is launching "100 Years of Service, 100 Ways of Giving Back," a major community service campaign featuring projects across greater Los Angeles. The program kicks off today at a celebration with city officials, community organizations, clients and friends at Walt Disney Concert Hall and will continue throughout the year.

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To jump start the "giving back" part of the initiative, PwC is working with nearly two dozen Los Angeles area community organizations with which the firm has longstanding relationships, including United Way, Junior Achievement, InnerCity Struggle, Habitat for Humanity, Ketchum YMCA, Minds Matter, Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, among others, to identify projects and provide its people with opportunities to get involved.  PwC recently hosted a service fair at Elysian Park, where partners and staff got the opportunity to meet many of the participating organizations and volunteer for upcoming projects.

PwC has also built an intranet site with the theme, "What's your LA story?" to generate excitement and internal buzz about the anniversary.  It provides a centralized resource of information about the campaign and serves as another vehicle for the firm's LA partners and staff to review and sign up for projects.  A unique feature of the site is a page allowing people to share personal stories of how they have helped in the community, fostering a feeling of shared commitment and inspiring others to participate.

"Rather than focus on one day and a single project, we wanted to have a greater impact that was worthy of the contributions of the firm and our people over the last century in Los Angeles," said Martha Corbett, Managing Partner of PwC's Southern California-Phoenix-Las Vegas Market. "I can't think of a better way to mark our centennial than to give back to the community where we live and work."

At today's kick-off event, PwC will receive a formal commendation from the Mayor and City Council to recognize the firm's 100th anniversary and longstanding support for the LA community.

"PwC has established itself as an upstanding corporate citizen in Los Angeles," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. "Over the last century, the firm has contributed time, effort and financial support to help make this the great city it is today.  On behalf of the people of Los Angeles, I thank PwC for its lengthy and distinguished track record of service."

PwC traces its roots in Los Angeles to 1911, when legacy firm Price Waterhouse became the first of the large accounting firms to establish a presence in the city at 456 S. Spring Street.  Throughout its years in Los Angeles, PwC has had a number of notable achievements and milestones, for example:

• 77 years leading the Oscars® balloting process on behalf of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Academy).
• Supervised the accounting for the 1932 Olympic Games.
• The oldest LA client has been with PwC since the local office opened; the oldest living PwC partner from the Los Angeles office is 97 years old.
• Growing from an office of two people - a partner and a typist - to nearly 100 partners and 1,400 total people.  This year, PwC's LA office had 10 new partner admissions and 16 other partners joined from other PwC offices or other firms.

Giving back to the community is part of PwC's culture.  Last year, the firm reached out to communities through nearly 200 firm-led projects, spent more than 53,000 work hours and impacted more than 70,000 children.  Over the past three years, the program has contributed more than 350,000 volunteer hours to nearly 1,000 projects throughout the country.  Locally, PwC's Los Angeles office has also averaged more than $500k in annual donations to United Way for the last three years.

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SOURCE PwC