Category: Big 4

If it happens at a Big 4 accounting firm, we’re talking about it here.

Going Concern March Madness Upset Alert: 3 of the Big 4 Under Pressure

We’ve got lots of Cinderellas in our midst friends. With 12 hours of voting to go in the first-ever Going Concern March Madness: Coolest Accounting Firm (“GCMMCAF”) bracket, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and KPMG are all in danger of being upset by BKD, Rothstein Kass and Crowe Horwath respectively.


As you no doubt noticed, #1 seed PwC is cruising along in their match-up with Reznick Group but aside from that, how is it that we could have such a dancity accounting firm bracket dance? Glad you asked because the consummate GC commenter, Another exKPMGer, has a theory:

I would wager serious money the cause for this is that the people who work for the other 3 firms, for the most part, didn’t vote for their own firm because they know their jobs are bullshit and want to give no sign of submission to their firm. Whereas the folks from PwC couldn’t click on themselves fast enough to prove how awesome they are. I hear they’re installing mirrors in every cubicle with the words etched at the bottom “PwC is AWESOME” so that you can stare at yourself all day and think about the awesomeness that you’re a part of.

There doesn’t appear to be any empirical evidence to support the theory at this time but supporters and debunkers are welcome to comment at the validity of this statement. And of course if you haven’t voted, jump over to the original post and get on this.

Ernst & Young, Guy Who Plays Boy Wizard to be Recognized by Trevor Project

Having seen the rabid crowds outside FAO Schwarz to see this guy first hand, it’s hard telling what kind of internal battle there is at E&Y to rub elbows with Harry Potter (even if he’s likely to be sans spectacles).

Daniel Radcliffe will be honored by The Trevor Project with the Trevor Hero Award during “Trevor LIVE” at Capitale (130 Bowery, NY, NY). The annual show benefits the life-saving work of The Trevor Project and will also honor Ernst & Young LLP with the Trevor 2020 Award.

If you’re not familiar with the Trevor Project, they do great work, focusing on “suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth.” Kudos to E&Y for the recognition.

Did KPMG Really Warn HSBC About Madoff Fraud Risks?

A report in Bloomberg apparently thinks so.

From the ‘Berg:

HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Europe’s biggest lender, was warned twice by auditors that entrusting as much as $8 billion in client funds to Bernard Madoff opened it up to “fraud and operational risks.”

KPMG LLP told the London-based bank about the risks in 2006 and 2008 reports. The firm was hired to review how Madoff invested and accounted for the funds, for which HSBC served as custodian. KPMG reported 25 such risks in 2006, and in 2008 found 28, according to copies of the reports obtained by Bloomberg News.

Okay l there for two before everyone gets too excited. Let’s just get one thing straight right off the bat – KPMG probably leaked these reports to Bloomberg (I only say probably because I don’t know for an absolute fact but – COME ON – who else?). Secondly, even though the report says “warned twice by auditors” this was not an audit performed by KPMG; it was “[a] review how Madoff invested and accounted for the funds.” What exactly that entails isn’t clear; possibly agreed-upon procedures? Anyway, here’s what the story says were in the two reports:

In the list of risks in KPMG’s report, number 2 was that “BLM embezzles client funds,” using the initials as shorthand for Bernard L. Madoff. To prevent it, KPMG recommended in both 2006 and 2008 that HSBC “establish a process to monitor monthly statements” and reconcile them with contributions from clients.

[…]

The 2006 report listed fraud risk number 5 as “client cash is diverted for personal gain” and risk number 18 as “trade is a sham in order to divert client cash.” It went on to say there were concerns “Madoff LLC falsely reports buy/sell trades without actually executing in order to earn commissions” and “BLM falsifies accounting records which are provided to HSBC.”

KPMG reviewed samples of trades and account statements for both its 2006 and 2008 reports to test the risks and detected no discrepancies, the reports said. Even so, the firm suggested HSBC “consider undertaking a periodic review which includes tracing a sample of client trades back to the bulk order.”

After reading that you might think that KPMG hit a home run but what if the “risk factors” listed are just standard boilerplate risks that are included in every single one of these reports? If that’s the case, then KPMG was slapping in the applicable information as it related to BLM, handed it over and collected a nice fee. Maybe KPMG was all over this but there’s no way to know because A) Bloomberg didn’t republish the reports in full; B) Other KPMG teams close to Madoff are getting their asses sued which means they either ignored the risks or couldn’t get a hold of these two reports and C) HSBC throws KPMG under the bus, essentially saying that they were duped by Berns:

HSBC confirmed hiring KPMG in 2005 and 2008 to review Madoff’s firm, adding it now believed Madoff had tricked the auditors. “It appears from U.S. government filings that Madoff and his employees foiled these reviews by, among other things, providing forged documentation to KPMG,” the bank said in an e- mailed statement.

“KPMG did not conclude in either of its reports that a fraud was being committed by Madoff,” HSBC said. “HSBC did not know that a fraud was being committed and lost $1 billion of its own assets as a victim.”

So did KPMG warn HSBC or not? This Bloomberg story seems to think so but there are is a lot of evidence that KPMG was just as clueless as as everyone else who didn’t walk – or run away screaming, arms flailing – away from Madoff.

HSBC Was Told About Madoff ‘Fraud Risks’ in Two KPMG Reports [Bloomberg]

PwC Lands Another KPMG Partner; Steven Tseng Joining Transfer Pricing Practice

This just in – more competitive poaching from P. Dubs.

PwC US announced today that Steven Tseng has joined PwC US as a partner in the firm’s Transfer Pricing practice. Tseng will relocate to China in June to focus on helping multinational companies with their transfer pricing planning in China and the Asia Pacific region. Tseng will also take the lead role for tax and transfer pricing planning for companies seeking to transform their value chain globally, in particular in Asia.

Tseng joins the firm from KPMG, where he was the Asia Pacific Regional leader for Global Transfer Pricing Services (GTPS) as well as the partner in charge of GTPS in China and Hong Kong. Prior to this role, Tseng was partner in charge of Financial Advisory Services for KPMG in Finland.

This latest pickup follows the firm snagging Tom Henry last month. Rumors have it that there will be more but the question is, who’s next? John Veihmeyer? Keep us updated if you hear anything.

ESPN’s Website Deemed Not Crucial for Ernst & Young’s Non-Monetary NCAA Bracket Competition

Perhaps circumstances have changed but as of yesterday, access to the most popular and comprehensive coverage on the web will not be allowed.


Which is unfortunate since some offices appear to be supportive of some bracketing.

Are you ready for March Madness?

As part of _______________ into spring campaign, it’s time to join the festivities during the 2011 NCAA Basketball Tournament. The “Madness” begins today with a non-monetary NCAA Tournament bracket competition. Everyone in the ___________ office can submit an online Tournament bracket. At the end of the Tournament, the person from each service line who picks the most winning teams will receive _____________________ (and bragging rights!).

You must complete your Tournament bracket before Thursday, March 17 __________________. Expand the section below for instructions on how to submit a bracket under your service line. During the Tournament, which concludes with the championship game on April 4, you can visit your group’s page and see how your bracket is performing compared with your service line colleagues’ brackets. If you have any questions, please contact ____________________________

Not exactly sure how you guys feel about a non-monetary competition but as far as strategy goes, since we’ve already given you access to the best strategy you can find. Of course some people are enjoying this immensely.

Deloitte Resigns as China MediaExpress Auditor; CFO Quits

In the wake of Roddy Boyd’s epic post from March 11th, China MediaExpress announced some bad news today – Deloitte resigned as their auditor effective Friday and as a result the company’s CFO, Jacky Lam, quit yesterday:

China’s largest television advertising operator on inter-city and airport express buses, today announced that the Company’s registered independent accounting firm, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (“DTT”) has formally resigned its engagement by the Company as of March 11, 2011. Following the receipt of the DTT resignation letter, on March 13, 2011, the Company received notice of the resignation of Jacky Lam from his position as Chief Financial Officer and director of the Company, effective immediately. As a result, CME will delay its fourth quarter earnings release and will not file its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2010 by March 16, 2011, its original due date.

As you might have already guessed, Deloitte got spooked after all the fraud talk and they also came to the conclusion that management couldn’t be trusted (even if he did say great things about them):

The DTT resignation letter stated that DTT was no longer able to rely on the representations of management, and recommended that certain issues encountered during the audit be addressed by an independent investigation. DTT’s letter also stated that these issues may have adverse implications for the prior periods’ financial reports and that, in their view, further investigatory procedures would be required to determine whether the prior periods’ financial reports are reliable. Upon receipt of the formal DTT resignation letter, the Company requested the suspension of trading in the Company’s common stock on the NASDAQ Global Market to permit full disclosure of DTT’s resignation to be disseminated to the public.

So the company now needs a new auditor and a new CFO. Of course you’ll have to work around forensic accountants and a bunch of lawyers that will be helping the company through this little hiccough but otherwise, this should be a snap.

Earlier:
Apparently ‘The Purpose of Auditors Is Completely, Entirely, and Wholly’ to Look for Fraud and ‘Deloitte is the best. Period. End of Statement.’

PwC Introduces Cleverly-Named Fortnightly Social Function

I overheard – and by that I mean someone sent us the gchat – the following conversation that occurred earlier today regarding friendly get-togethers that will be going down at 300 Madison starting next Thursday.

[Someone at PwC]: From my good friend [Someone else at PwC]
[Someone at PwC, quoting an email]: Take a break. Unwind. Catch up with your coach or colleagues. Enjoy refreshments. Play a game. Right here in 300 Madison at our new Post work Connections. Designed to show appreciation for everything you do — and to provide a place for you and your colleagues — to meet and get to know people. It’s a place to just have fun! Post work Connections will be open every other Thursday, from 5:00-8:00 p.m., in 300 Madison’s deck/cafeteria, from March 24 – June 16. We look forward to seeing you at our grand opening on March 24. Give it a try. There will be beer, wine, soda, snacks, games — and raffles for prizes! Get caught in the act of having fun at work! Hope to see you there!
[Someone at PwC]: Note that post work connections starts with PwC
[Someone who knows someone at PwC]: Good lord
[Someone who knows someone at PwC]: That’s epic
[Someone who knows someone at PwC]: Is the “post work connections starts with..” comment theirs or yourts
[Someone at PwC]: Mine
[Someone who knows someone at PwC]: Love it.

Personally, I’m mostly curious about the “games” aspect of these events. Are we talking Risk™? Beer pong? Scrabble™? Or we talking an Angry Birds round-robin tournament? Regardless, we’ll be interested to hear how these Thursday ragers will go. Keep us in the loop.

How Bad Are the Odds of Making Partner at a Big 4 Firm?

If you’re a (senior) manager at one of the Final Four horsemen of the accounting firm apocalypse, you may have asked yourself this very question. A reader recently dropped some quantitative analysis on us, writing, “I tried to step past anecdote and see how bad things really were.” This is specifically for the audit practice and is fairly large office, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

Using commonly available data from my firm, I decided to create a quasi-statistical analysis of the likelihood of senior managers making partner in the near future.

There were, as of the date I pulled this data, 843 senior managers in our audit practice. It’s too time consuming to divide these among starting classes, so I’ve made the following simplified assumptions:

Tenure:
9 year – 30% of the population, or 253 senior managers
10 year – 25%, or 211
11 year – 20%, or 169
12 year – 15%, or 126
13 year – 10% or 84

Let’s consider half of year 11 and all of year 12 and 13+ to be “in the pipeline”. That’s 295 senior managers competing for a given number of partner/principal/director (“partner”) spots.

Our tipster used a sample of approximately 200 partners (out of an assumed total of ~1,000) to conclude that approximately 14% of them would retire in the next five years (assuming 30+ years with the firm, mandatory retirement at 62) and assumed a 6% growth rate (which he/she admits, is on the aggressive side).

Here’s an extrapolation of open spots based on turnover and growth:

1,000 partners x 14% turnover = 140 partners turn over due to attrition, or 28 partners per year
1,000 partners x 6% growth = 60 partners per year, ignoring compounding

84 new partners sounds like a lot of partners. That’s because it is. Those in the know put our planned crop of partners at ~50 for 2011. At best, you’re looking at 1 in 4 of those high performing senior managers making partner, based on our assumptions. More realistically, it means that 1 in 6 can make partner.

Maybe you’ll take those odds, maybe you won’t but like we said, if you’re working in an office that is a fraction of the size in our tipster’s pattern, your odds could be worse depending on the situation in your office. Our tipster continues:

These odds are much worse than anyone is willing to admit, and simply making promotion a war of attrition by extending the partner track to 15 years isn’t going to do much to clear up the pipeline, since very few senior managers are going to find an opportunity that presents the chance of making $300k plus within 2 or 3 years. The situation gets even more grim for senior managers in their 9th and 10th year, who have a huge backlog in front of them and a glut of peers who were hired in the SarBox days of senior managers leaving for 30-40% raises and expect the same in their own careers.

Experienced seniors and new managers should very carefully consider the extended consequences of this data, and what it’s going to look like in 7-9 years when they are trying to make partner. The days of 15% growth in our industry are over and aren’t coming back, and the reality is that many Big 4 senior managers simply are not employable in industry at their current salary levels. Think through your career decisions in the coming 18 months very carefully.

As we’ve discussed, the firms know full well that not everyone has the goal of becoming a partner but if you do have partner ambitions, you’re in a pretty select group. The problem is, the odds still seem to be against you. Now with busy season winding down and three of the four firms closing in on fiscal year-ends, this year’s performance (and prospects outside the firm, depending on how promotions fall out) will be weighing heavy on the minds of many.

Will a Couple of Past Arrests Jeopardize Your Big 4 Job Offer?

Welcome to the bracketastic edition of Accounting Career Emergencies. In today’s edition, a future tax associate is losing sleep over his offer with a Big 4 firm that could be at risk because of two past convictions. Will his past indiscretions torpedo his job prospects before things get rolling?

Need some semi-reasonable career advice? Do you avoid confrontation as a general rule? Looking for some ideas on how to carry on an imaginary conversation? Email us at advice@goingconcern.com and we’ll get you prepared for an elevator ride.

Back to our tax troublemaker:

To whom it may (going) concern,

I recently accepted an offer to join the Tax Department at a local Big 4 office. Although quite ecstatic to receive an offer from my top choice, I am worried that a past arrest may jeopardize my prospects with the firm. The case consisted of two convictions, unlawful open container and trespassing. I am in the process of getting the convictions expunged, however, I don’t know if they will be off my record by the time background checks are performed.

What will the firm make of this? They seem pretty minor on the continuum of things to be arrested for, but I didn’t know if any arrest is seen as a warning signal. If it’s something I should worry about, when and who should I contact with this information.

Any help is welcomed, because after pre first-round interview dreams and pre-second round interview dreams, the last thing I want is to have dreams regarding my background check for the next seven months.

Thank you

Dear Open Trespasser,

Lucky for you, I have experience in this regard, as I had my share of minor offenses prior to starting my career. The details of which are inconsequential but let’s just say I had a run of bad luck prior to reaching the age of 21. In your case, I’m pretty confident that you have little to worry with regard to your two convictions, mostly because they are minor, non-violent offenses. If you had taken the open container, cracked it over someone’s skull (the trespassee, let’s say), which then resulted in a circus of a trial that tarnished your entire school’s/fraternity’s/family’s reputation, then you might have a valid concern.

Having said that, it’s not impossible that a firm wouldn’t, all of sudden, decide to make an example out of someone but it seems pretty unlikely. Everybody makes mistakes and if your tax group really was excited about bring ing you on board, a couple of slip-ups like this aren’t going to change their mind about you.

You’re doing the right thing by requesting the convictions to be expunged and I believe they would do so after a number of years, even if you chose not to do so. Good luck with the new gig and try to keep your nose clean. But, breaking the law while an employee of a Big 4 firm is definitely not a great way to keep a job.

PwC Is Giving $5,000 to a College Student Who Makes the Best ‘Elevator Pitch’ Video That Won’t Closely Resemble Any Conversation They’ll Ever Have in an Elevator

For any current PwC employees if you, in the off-chance, happen to run into Bob Moritz in the elevator at 300 Madison, you might say, “Hey, thanks for the iPad,” or “I don’t care what anyone says, I love the colors of the new logo,” or “You look great with your shirt off.”


On the other hand, if you’re a college student and you need a little extra cash, you might be willing to script together a few awkward sentences that you would say to BoMo or Dennis Nally if, in fact they were interested in being accosted by a wide-eyed eager beaver that is rambling on about their leadership roles in Beta Alpha Psi only to be cut off with, “Sounds great but I really got hit the john.”

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, you’ve got until March 25th to get your entry submitted.

Making an Impression [PwC Careers/Facebook]

Apparently ‘The Purpose of Auditors Is Completely, Entirely, and Wholly’ to Look for Fraud and ‘Deloitte is the best. Period. End of Statement.’

Remember China MediaExpress? That’s the company whose CEO – Zheng Cheng – responded to the accusations of fraud by evoking ‘reputable and well-known’ Deloitte to get the haters off their back. Even though the company is still taking heat, Mr Cheng will be happy to know that he’s got someone in his corner: Glen Bradford, CEO of ARM Holdings LLC, a Hedge Fund Advisory Company. The thing is, Mr Bradford seems a little confused about what an auditor’s purpose is (for fun, I added some emphasis):

I have received tons of messages that can be summarized by the belief that auditors do not look for fraud and that all they do is make sure things line up in the reports. I can say that this is not true simply by being practical. If we didn’t have auditors to verify the claims that companies make, then companies could claim whatever they want to. The purpose of auditors is completely, entirely, and wholly to look for indications of fraudulant activity — and to do their best to remove all possible doubt that the company is misrepresenting itself on its financial statements.

You can make of that what you will but then Glen continues:

Then, if things are OK, they sign off on them. Some auditors are better than others. Deloitte is the best. Period. End of Statement.

Well then! I’m sure Deloitte appreciates the ringing endorsement regardless if it comes from someone who is under the impression that “The purpose of auditors is completely, entirely, and wholly to look for indications of fraudulant activity.” At the very least, this is debatable point, so if you have a difference of opinion with anything above, feel free to share below.

China MediaExpress Holdings: All Eyes on Deloitte [Seeking Alpha]

Chinese Companies Want the Big 4 Magic

“Companies are under pressure from investors to get the best auditor they can,” said Paul Gillis, an accounting professor at Peking University in Beijing. More than 200 Chinese companies are listed on U.S. exchanges, and hundreds more trade on over-the-counter bulletin boards. In the last five months, at least 15 have upgraded to a Big Four auditor — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers or KPMG — from a smaller firm, according to an analysis from Audit Analytics. [Reuters]