PwC announces a $12 billion plan to recruit 100,000 people and train 25,000 Black and Latinx students over 5 years

• PwC announced a $12 billion plan to hire an extra 100,000 people between 2021 and 2026.
• About 10,000 of these hires will be Black and Latinx students, it said Tuesday.
• The firm said it wanted to focus more on environmental, social, and governance advice to clients.

PwC is spending $12 billion on a new plan to hire 100,000 people over the next five years.

"The New Equation" plan, announced on Tuesday, is set to pump money into recruitment, training, and technology at the firm, and focus PwC on giving clients more environmental, social, and governance advice, the company said. The professional services firm said it wanted to grow its 284,000-person global workforce by more than a third between 2021 and 2026.

PwC US is committing $125 million to prepare 25,000 Black and Latinx students for business careers as part of the plan, Tim Ryan, PwC's US chairman and senior partner, said in a LinkedIn blog post on Tuesday.

PwC plans to hire 10,000 of these students over the next five years, he said.

"We're going to get them ready for the workforce, to create internships, and training opportunities," Ryan told Fast Company on Tuesday.

"Ten thousand will come to us, which is important, but we will be equally proud of the [other] 15,000 we're going to help because that then gets to solving the broader societal problem."

PwC currently has around 55,000 US employees and hires up to 8,000 Americans a year, the Financial Times reported.

The infrastructure plan also includes a $3 billion drive to double its business in the Asia-Pacific region, PwC said. Bob Moritz, global chair of PwC, said the firm was "going to massively invest to redefine itself and rebrand itself to make sure we're valuable for what our clients need and what the world needs."