Accounting News Roundup: PwC on Climate Change; REITs Are All the Rage; Future Big 4 Burnouts | 09.10.14

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

This Legendary Accounting Firm Just Ran the Numbers on Climate Change [MoJo]
Odd thing #1: Seeing PwC mentioned in a Mother Jones article. Odd thing #2: PwC issuing doomsday reports on climate change.

Split for PwC too in City power couple's billion-pound divorce [Telegraph]
That's a poorly written headline: PwC resigned as the auditor of a billionaire's charity run by billionaire's soon-to-be ex-wife.

Deloitte creates 338 new technology jobs in Belfast [BBC]
The Green Dot is getting busy in Wales, too.

Tax friendly trusts swell under new rules [The Hill]
Unintended consequences or exactly what Congress was hoping for? "[J]ust this year, the IRS released new rules that signaled the agency broadly defines what constitutes real estate, opening it up to areas such as a telecommunications company’s fiber optic and copper networks." 

10 accounting students receive 2014-2015 AICPA/Accountemps Student Scholarship [AT]
At least a few in this group will quit their Big 4 job before hitting the 2 year mark.

Are Colleges Producing Career-Ready Graduates? [WSJ]
A duo of profs say, "NOPE!": "Sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa tracked more than 1,600 students during college and about 1,000 for two years after their 2009 graduation dates. Their findings are dismaying: Of the students who didn't go immediately into graduate school, slightly more than a quarter earned above $40,000 a year in a full-time job two years after graduation. Nearly three-quarters relied on their parents for at least some financial assistance."

Here's The Most Affluent Town In Every State [BI]
Chevy Chase, Maryland?

Bill Ackman Thought Allergan Directors Would’ve Accepted The Fact That He’s A Genius By Now [DB]
They must've figured that if PwC can ignore him, why can't they?

Man Sleepwalks Off a Cliff, Doesn't Wake Up Dead [Gawker]
Amazing.

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Brits To Give Big 4 the Full Monty

Britain’s top accountants are to have their own books scrutinised after the consumer watchdog referred the business of checking companies’ figures for a full-scale competition inquiry. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said it had been concerned for some time that the audit market is highly concentrated with low levels of switching and substantial barriers to entry. The watchdog estimates that in 2010 the “big four” firms, PwC, KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young, earned 99% of audit fees paid by FTSE 100 companies, while between 2002 and 2010 only 2.3% of FTSE 100 firms changed their auditor. [UKPA]

Accounting News Roundup: Britain Suspects Big 4 Restrict Audit Competition; Hedge Accounting Joust; Kyl Is Cool with Closing Loopholes | 05.17.11

UK watchdog suspects auditors restrict competition [Reuters]
Britain’s Office of Fair Trading said problems in the audit market meet the conditions for a referral to the country’s main Competition Commission watchdog. The watchdog said it had “reached the provisional view that there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that there are features of the market that restrict, distort or prevent competition in the UK.

New York Investigates Banks’ Role in Fiscal Crisis [NYT]
The New York attorney general has requested information and docus from three major Wall Street banks about their mortgage securities operations during the credit boom, indicating the existence of a new investigation into practices that contributed to billions in mortgage losses.

Judge Jails IMF Chief in Sexual-Assault Case [WSJ]
International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was ordered held without bail Monday after Manhattan prosecutors charged him with seven counts stemming from allegations he sexually assaulted a hotel housekeeper—a decision that sends one of the towering figures of international finance and French politics to a jail cell on New York’s Rikers Island.

LinkedIn Boosts IPO Price to Raise $405.7 Million [Bloomberg]
LinkedIn Corp., the networking website for professionals, increased the price range for its initial public offering, lifting the company’s potential valuation to as much as $4.25 billion. The company is selling shares at $42 to $45 each, according to a filing today with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The shares had been offered for $32 to $35 apiece. At the new top end of the range, LinkedIn would raise $405.7 million, about 29 percent more than previously sought.

A Brief Exchange with an IASB Member on Hedge Accounting [Accounting Onion]
You might read this “brief exchange” and conclude that “accounting joust” may be more appropriate.

Bienvenue! French Audit Firm Mazars Arrives In U.S. [Forbes]
Francine takes a look at WeiserMazars as a potential player in the U.S. and is probably taking advantage of “French” as a hot SEO term.

Honda CFO: Earnings Likely To Take Hit From Quake, Strong Yen [Dow Jones]
Honda Motor Co.’s […] earnings are likely to suffer in the fiscal year that started in April due to the negative impact of the March 11 earthquake on the company’s production capacity and persistent yen strength against the dollar, the company’s chief financial officer said Tuesday.

Sen. Kyl: Close Tax Loopholes But Don’t Collect More Money [WSJ]
Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican, went to the Senate floor today to make clear that he is for closing tax loopholes, but he doesn’t want any net increase in tax collections. “I would be very much in favor of taking a look at these tax expenditures, various subsidies, for example, to different groups to see whether we could reduce some of those subsidies and thereby reduce tax rates in a revenue-neutral manner,” he said Monday.