Deloitte Consulting Partners to Meet

Deloitte & Touche’s consulting partners will meet in San Francisco this week as the second-largest accounting firm decides how to separate its consulting business from the firm’s core audit and tax operations.

Deloitte spokesman John L’Abate declined to comment on a published report that partners will hear a proposal for a management buyout of the business valued at $3.1 billion.

“We will be talking about the operations and the administration of the firm as we do every year,” L’Abate said, noting that the meeting of the consulting partners is an annual event.

Deloitte said in February it would join the major accounting firms in separating consulting from auditing to remove perceived conflicts of interest. After the collapse of Enron Corp., which used Arthur Andersen both as auditor and consultant, companies such as Walt Disney Co. and Johnson & Johnson said they will no longer use the same firm to provide both types of services.

Deloitte is the last of the major accounting firms to decide on the future of its consulting business. Ernst & Young sold its consulting unit to the French company Cap Gemini in 2000, while KPMG spun off its business in an initial stock offering last year. Andersen separated from its consulting business, now known as Accenture Ltd., in 2000 and sold its remaining consulting operations to KPMG Consulting Inc. last month.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world’s largest accounting firm, will sell a stake in its consulting business via an IPO in August.