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Private Equity
How Private Equity Is Quietly Rewriting the Rules of Professions [ProMarket]
Writes John M. Barrios, Assistant Professor of Accounting at the Washington University in St Louis, Olin School of Business:
From an antitrust perspective, professional services present two blind spots. The first is labor. Antitrust enforcement has historically focused on product markets, but in professions, labor is the critical input. When a handful of firms dominate local labor markets for accountants, lawyers, or clinicians, they gain leverage not just over workers, but over the capacity of the industry itself. Comparing wage suppression in these markets to classic consumer price concerns highlights why labor deserves equal footing in antitrust analysis. For instance, while consumer prices might rise modestly, wage stagnation or decline can have a much larger impact on the well-being of professionals in the sector. This concern has been increasingly emphasized by the FTC and Department of Justice’s joint antitrust guidance on labor markets.
AI
KPMG pressed its auditor to pass on AI cost savings [Financial Times]
It gets funnier when you find out their auditor is Grant Thornton
The Big Four firm told its auditor, Grant Thornton UK, it should pass on cost savings from the rollout of AI and threatened to find a new accountant if it did not agree to a significant fee reduction, the people said.
Goldman Sachs taps Anthropic’s Claude to automate accounting, compliance roles [CNBC]
The bank has, for the past six months, been working with embedded Anthropic engineers to co-develop autonomous agents in at least two specific areas: accounting for trades and transactions, and client vetting and onboarding, according to Marco Argenti, Goldman’s chief information officer. The firm is “in the early stages” of developing agents based on Anthropic’s Claude model that will collapse the amount of time these essential functions take, Argenti said. He expects to launch the agents “soon,” though he declined to provide a specific date. “Think of it as a digital co-worker for many of the professions within the firm that are scaled, are complex and very process intensive,” he said.
Education
Senators Collins, Rosen Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Support Accounting Education [Senator Collins]
Why do we get a bad feeling about this?
“Mathematics and technology skills can help students unlock countless doors to high-paying, in-demand fields. One of those doors leads to the accounting profession, whose work plays a key role in providing capital markets with confidence and assurance in financial reporting,” said Senator Collins. “Our bipartisan bill would recognize accounting as a STEM subject and strengthen the pipeline of future accountants, who play a vital role in our financial system.”
Anderson School of Management launches experiential learning plan to grow accounting enrollment [University of New Mexico]
Anderson has developed a five-year plan with the objective of increasing the enrollment of undergraduate and graduate accounting students through opportunities outside of the classroom. Initiatives for the first-year focus on removing barriers to professional exposure by funding student attendance to conferences and competitions, hosting networking and recruitment events, and creating faculty stipends to support and oversee these efforts.
Rules and Regs
AICPA invites public input on attestation standard changes [The Accountant Online]
The Auditing Standards Board (ASB) will specifically seek input on sustainability-related information and other emerging assurance areas. The organisation has not yet fixed the length of the consultation, but the comment period will run for at least 120 days from the date of publication.
FASB revisits thorny goodwill accounting [CFO Dive]
Nearly four years after dropping a years-long project that would have changed goodwill accounting, the Financial Accounting Standards Board is revisiting the matter.
Accountant Ws
Toyota Just Swapped Its ‘Car Guy’ CEO For An Accountant [Carscoops]
Kenta Kon, often described as a numbers-focused executive, has been with Toyota since 1991. In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Kon said, “Since I handle accounting … I’m extremely particular about profits and numbers that enable solid investments to develop cars.”
Tax
‘Setting this agency up for failure’: Amid staffing crunch, IRS taps employees with no relevant experience to assist during filing season [Government Executive]
The Internal Revenue Service is asking seasoned employees without any direct tax experience to perform entry-level tasks of answering phones and processing tax returns, a step impacted staff call unprecedented as the agency scrambles to prepare for filing season. The reassigned workers, who are being detailed out on an involuntary basis, are coming from the IRS human resources and, potentially, the IT departments.
Delco Man Pleads To Tax Fraud After Lying To Accountant, IRS [Patch]
A pizza shop owner in Pennsylvania told his return preparer that Mimmo’s only had four employees, including himself. In reality it had approximately 25 employees.
