George Touche was born in Edinburgh. He was the son of a banker so he has a close connection to the business world since he grew up. He studied in the Edinburgh Institute and the University of Edinburgh later. Then, he became the chartered accountants in 1878.

What they are famous for

George Touche did not start his career as the accountant right after his graduation. Instead, he was appointed as the secretary and director of many companies gradually. It was partly attributed to his family reputation at that time.

In 1899, he established his own firm in accounting field. The firm was called George Touch & Co. When he worked in this company, he tried to relax the work of an accountant. Instead of urging his staff to work a lot to achieve the result, he would emphasize the importance of being people-oriented in management. He would not try to make the staff work too hard. Instead, he would give his staff time to take a break and stop a bit when they were too frustrated.

Apart from being a famous accountant, George Touche was also a politician. This was a bit different from the traditional image of an accountant. George Touche was elected as the Conservative Member of Parliament in the North Islington and he was knighted in 1917.

How they affected the world today

As mentioned above, George Touche introduced a new way of management to the accounting firm. Later, when the firm was integrated or merged with other accounting firms, the business management practice of George Touche was still kept. In other words, the later Deloitte firm evolved from Touche was also more people-oriented than result-oriented. No doubt, staff had to work very hard from time to time in order to achieve the result. However, they would be given time to take a rest and to think more from their personal goals instead of only working on the auditing or accounting papers. This was an important practice which helped many of the accountants to control their emotion and work-life balance well.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu was an important accounting firm in the world nowadays. It is regarded as one of the important big four accounting firms in the current world. Part of the foundations of this firm comes from the office established by George Touche. The firm of George Touche mainly handled the tax work at that time and this helped the partnership of Deloitte Touche grow very well because the income tax projects were not handled by many accountants at that time. In other words, the market share of George Touche firm in the tax field was large and this helped the whole partnership to grow.

In conclusion, George Touche was an important person in establishing Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Although it could not see the result achieves by the firm nowadays, his great work done in the initial establishment of the firm and the management of staff there helped the firm to achieve its results nowadays.