PricewaterhouseCoopers expects a "very high double-digit growth" in China despite the financial tsunami, its chief executive officer told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

The international accounting firm will continue to hire talented staff in China and it expects transactions to return to active in the middle of next year and the domestic stock market to recover when the global capital market bottoms out, Samuel A. DiPiazza Jr, chief executive of PwC, said on the sidelines of the 20th IBLAC meeting in Shanghai yesterday.

"Our business in China is very strong, and we expect it to remain very strong, but there will be changes," he said.

"There will be fewer initial public offerings, less capital deployment, fewer mergers and acquisitions due to the financial crisis," he said. "But we are also very active in advising our clients how to restructure during the dismal and tough time or helping our clients to deal with slow growth."

DiPiazza said: "PricewaterhouseCoopers is not an island, we are part of the global economy as well, and we do expect to slow a little bit." He said the company's growth in developed markets may slow but he still expects a robust growth in China.

PwC has maintained an 8-percent to 10-percent growth in developed economies while for emerging markets such as China and India the firm has surged 25 percent to 35 percent in the past years.

The firm has invested about US$200 million in China.

(Shanghai Daily November 3, 2008)