large accounting firms and formed a firm called KPMG in the United States, and most of the rest of the world, and Peat Marwick McLintock in the United Kingdom. In the Netherlands, as a consequence of the merger between PMI and KMG in 1988, PMI tax advisors joined Meijburg & Co. (The tax advisory agency Meijburg & Co. was founded by Willem Meijburg, Inspector of National Taxes, in 1939). Today, the Netherlands is the only country with two members of KPMG International: KPMG Audit (accountants) and Meijburg & Co (tax consultants). In 1991, the firm was renamed KPMG Peat Marwick, and in 1999, the name was reduced again to KPMG. In October 1997, KPMG and Ernst & Young announced that they were to merge. However, while the merger to form PricewaterhouseCoopers was granted regulatory approval, the KPMG/Ernst & Young tie-up was later abandoned. Recent history In 2001, KPMG spun off its United States consulting firm through an initial public offering of KPMG Consulting, which was rebranded BearingPoint. In early 2009, BearingPoint filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The UK and Dutch consulting arms were sold to Atos in 2002. In 2003, KPMG divested itself of its legal arm, Klegal and KPMG sold its Dispute Advisory Services to FTI Consulting. KPMG's member firms in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein merged to form KPMG Europe LLP in October 2007. These member firms were followed by Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, CIS (Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Georgia), Turkey, Norway, and Saudi Arabia. They appointed joint Chairmen, John Griffith-Jones and Ralf Nonnenmacher. In 2020, KPMG International Limited was incorporated in London, England. In February 2021, KPMG UK appointed its first female leaders, replacing Bill Michael, who stepped aside after making controversial comments. Bina Mehta was asked to step in as acting UK chairman and Mary O'Connor took over Michael's executive responsibilities as acting senior partner in UK. In April 2021, O'Connor quit the firm after being passed over for the permanent role. In November 2021, KPMG UK was reported as having revised its partnership process to introduce five levels of partnership which required partners to inject capital at levels starting at £150,000 and going up to £500,000. This along with the £115 million proceeds from the sale of its pensions business earlier in 2021, which it seems was not distributed to the partners, was intended to prepare the