For two decades, EY has helped clients stay on the straight and narrow.  The world's second-largest accounting firm, Ernst & Young's 144,000 employees around the world offer advisory, assurance, tax and transaction advisory services via offices in 140 countries. 

It's difficult to discuss EY's consulting capabilities without delving into the realm of ancient business history.  First, and perhaps most importantly, is that there is no such thing as a "consulting" wing at Ernst & Young.  There is, however, an "advisory" unit, a term adopted as EY sought to rebuild its business advisory presence following the $11 billion sale of its original consulting unit to Capgemini in 2000.  The reason for that shift in terminology appears to lie with then-CEO James Turley, who commented in 2007 that "'consulting' is a very broad and no longer particularly helpful term."  Accordingly, the firm "advises," where others might "consult," on four core areas: performance improvement (finance, customer and supply chain and operations); risk (enterprise-wide governance, risk and compliance, internal audit, internal controls financial services risk management and actuarial); IT risk and assurance (IT risk management, application risk, infrastructure risk, and data risk and IT assurance); and other cross-advisory teams, such as IT advisory, people and organizational change, program advisory and strategic performance.