Fee income at the Irish offices of Pricewaterhouse- Coopers (PwC) fell to €332 million for the year to the end of June, down 6.5 per cent on the previous year, when its all-Ireland fee income amounted to €355 million.

Ronan Murphy, a senior partner at the accountancy firm, which employs 2,673 people in Ireland, said he believed PwC had held its nerve through a difficult economic period and carefully managed its cost base.

Meanwhile, a survey of the Irish funds industry by information providers Lipper, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters, has found that Pricewaterhouse- Coopers remains the biggest auditors of investment funds, auditing 1,895 of the 6,098 funds domiciled here.