Grant Thornton
UK accounting professional services network
Grant Thornton is a multinational professional services network based in London, United Kingdom. It is the seventh-largest in the world by revenue and the sixth-largest by number of employees. The network consists of independent accounting and consulting member firms that provide assurance, tax, and advisory services to privately held businesses, public interest entities, and public sector organisations.
Grant Thornton is composed of member firms affiliated with Grant Thornton International Ltd., a private company limited by guarantee, incorporated in England and Wales. Grant Thornton is a not-for-profit, non-practising, international umbrella membership entity, and has no share capital.
Member firms within the Grant Thornton network operate in 147 markets employing around 73,000 personnel for a combined global revenue of US$7.5 billion.
History
20th century
The earliest origins of the name date back to 1904, when the UK firm of Thornton and Thornton was formed in Oxford. Through a series of name changes this firm merged in 1959 with another UK firm, Baker & Co, which traced its origins to 1868, to form the firm Thornton Baker. In 1975 Thornton Baker merged with Kidston, Jackson, McBain, a UK firm which traced its origins to the Glaswegian accountant, Robert McCowan, who set up in practice in 1844, and was a founder of the Institute of Accountants and Actuaries in Glasgow in 1853.
In the US, 26-year-old Alexander Richardson Grant founded Alexander Grant & Co in Chicago in 1924.
“Grant Thornton” enters the record as uK accounting professional services network. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Grant, Thornton and accounting can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3115410. VIAF identifies the subject as 145049285. The Library of Congress control number is n84000272. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1959, 1868 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Grant Thornton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.