NOTE: The following biographical notes are taken from the official History of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), which was published in 1965.
"Edwin Waterhouse was born in Liverpool in 1841... [His] firm adopted its present title of Price, Waterhouse & Co. in 1874... Apart from being one of the great founders of the profession, he combined great ability and strength of character with a particularly gentle nature. His interests were in music and art and a love of his countryside in Surrey.
"Ernest Cooper was the youngest of a family of thirteen, four of whom founded the firm of Cooper Brothers & Co. of which he was the senior partner for thirty years from 1893... his contribution to [the affairs of the Institute] and to the dignity of the profession was outstanding. He was somewhat of a forbidding figure with a reputation for absolute integrity. In dress and in manner he was Victorian and behaved as such. He was abstemious, blunt in approach and direct of speech. He was invariably dressed in a curious starched white shirt of his own design with short black coat and striped trousers and, after a business trip to Greece early in his career, he always wore a beard.
[NOTE: The two above are the original senior partners of the firms that are now amalgamated as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which cannot even describe itself as a firm of Chartered Accountants any more (because of an insufficiently high proportion of C.A.s in the partnership).]
"Before he set up as a practising accountant in 1845, Deloitte had for twelve years been on the staff of the Official Assignee in Bankruptcy... in his later years he delighted in country life in Southall where he held considerable property. His name derives from his grandfather, a certain Count de Loitte, in the household of Louis XVI... 'He was an alert, decisive little man, with just a touch of austerity in his manner - most particular in all things and dressed very carefully - his patience was sorely tried by the inability of the junior clerk to make head or tail of his handwriting."
[NOTE: UK firm of Deloittes became part of Coopers & Lybrand, now part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers: in rest of world, combined with Touche Ross & Co to form Deloitte & Touche.]
"He became head of the firm of Harmood-Banner & Son on the death of his father, the founder of the firm...[he was] a Member of Parliament for the Everton Division of Liverpool... He was High Sheriff of Cheshire, was knighted in 1913 and created a baronet in 1924. He took on a large number of directorships... In build he was short and stout, and it is said that on rising after being dubbed a knight he broke his braces."
[NOTE: Harmood Banner & Co. later became part of Deloittes, I think.]
"From modest beginnings as the son of a grocer and draper near Newcastle-on-Tyne, he climbed not only in the world of accountancy but in the sphere of public influence... he rose to be senior partner in Deloitte Plender Griffiths & Co... at international accounting conferences he was an outstanding figure. In his private life, he was a keen student of historical and humanitarian literature which he could quote on appropriate occasions in speeches remarkable for their felicity...
[NOTE: There is a lawyer called Richard Plender QC who I guess is some relative?]
"Palmour joined in 1901 the firm of Whinney, Smith & Whinney with which he remained throughout his life, being its senior partner from 1927 until his death in 1948... In 1938 he led the British delegation to the International Congress of Accountants in Berlin at the time of the Munich crisis, and though he behaved with dignity and decorum in public, his colleagues were frightened behind the scenes that he would bring on war a year earlier than happened. It was said of him that he belonged to an age when the British Government was able to send a gunboat to enforce payment of debt or bonds that fell into arrear... He was a forceful and picturesque character, with a manner as blunt as his heart was kind. He was a very prominent freemason, holding the rank of Past Grand Warden of England. He was knighted in 1946."
[NOTE: Now Ernst+Young.]