Sycip Gorres Velayo & Co.
SyCip Gorres Velayo & Co. (branded as SGV & Co.) is the Philippines' largest multidisciplinary professional services firm. As of 2014, the company has employed over 3,000 professionals from various disciplines, including Certified Public Accountants, legal professionals, economists, human resource professionals, engineers, statisticians, financial analysts, and other business and technical experts.
Since 1996, it has been the only ISO 9002-certified professional services firm in the country, becoming an affiliate of Ernst & Young International on June 6, 2002.
History
SyCip, Gorres, Velayo, and Company was founded by Filipino Chinese businessman Washington SyCip in Manila, providing services to businesses recovering from the Second World War.[1] It was a one-man operation, with SyCip as accountant, messenger, and janitor simultaneously. SyCip's boyhood friend, Alfredo M. Velayo, and Vicente O. José, an accountant with copious experience in tax work, were taken in as partners in 1947 to form SyCip, Velayo, Jose & Co.
In 1948, the firm embarked on its first overseas engagement by working out a merger with Henry Hunter Bayne & Co. (HHB), which started its practice in the then-American controlled Philippine Islands in 1906.
In 1953, Thomas Farnell, a senior partner of HHB, decided to return to the United States and sell his practise to Filipino accountants Arsenio Reyes and Ramón J. Gorres. After a series of negotiations between the two and SyCip, the firms merged to form SyCip, Gorres, Velayo & Co.
In 1958, SGV & Co. assumed the practise of British firm Fleming & Williamson, which was rated the second-largest accounting firm in the Philippines, and expanded further by establishing offices in Bacolod and Davao. Over the years, the firm have had correspondent relations with some of the leading western firms, among them Arthur Andersen & Co.; Ernst & Ernst; Haskins & Sells; and Ernst & Young. It has provided institutional development projects in more than 30 countries with funding assistance from international institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
In 1985, SGV & Co. became a member firm of Arthur Andersen & Co., S.C., one of the largest professional service organisations in the world. A year later, the firm opened its Manila Offshore Systems Development Center, with assistance from Andersen Consulting, and has provided computer software services to foreign clients through Andersen Consulting's global marketing network and resources. SGV & Co. became a member practise of Ernst & Young on September 1, 2002.
The firm is currently headquartered in Makati, and has eight branches across the Philippines.[2][3]
Services
SGV & Co. offers a variety of services for its different clients:
- External Audit
- Compilation and Review Services
- Accounting Consultations
- International Accounting Standards Conversions and Advisory
- Regulatory Compliance
- Extended Audit Services
- Accounting Advisory and Consultation Services on Deal Structuring
- Due Diligence Work
- Fraud and Investigative Dispute Services