Category: Big 4

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

The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Ernst & Young #77 (2011)

Well, there had to be a biggest loser in Fortune rankings this year amongst the accounting firms and this year the honor belongs to E&Y. Now, we’re sure you’ll give us your thoughts on why you think the firm took a dive from #44 (highest ranked firm last year) to #77 but the fact that Fortune indicates the firm dropped subsidized gym memberships could be a good place to start. Maybe E&Y decided it prefers its people on the frumpy side? Or maybe they’re simply saving for the Lehman Brothers defense fund?


Ernst & Young – Previous rank: #44. Need reasons? How about corporate citizenship? Fortune says, “The consulting and auditing firm donated some $31 million to charitable causes in 2009, including $6.4 million in matching contributions.”

Stats of note:
• New Jobs (1 year): -1,751
• % Job Growth (1 year): -7%
• % Voluntary Turnover: 11%
• No. of Job Openings at 1/13/2010: 10,000
• Most common salaried job: Manager – $102,593
• % Minorities: 29%
• % Women: 49%

Taking a look at last year’s stats, new jobs, percentage job growth, voluntary turnover, average salary for most common job all trended negatively. Percentage of minorities was flat and percentage of women ticked down 1%. The number of job openings jumped from 622 last year to the 10,000 above, so interpret you can either interpret that as “we’re desperate for people” or “we’re growing like gangbusters.” Arguments for each, thoughts on the 33 slot drop or speculation on what kind of cigars Jim Turley (Cohibas, we thinks) took to Davos are welcome at this time.

Earlier:
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Plante & Moran #26 (2011)
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Deloitte #63 (2011)
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: PwC #73 (2011)
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Ernst & Young #44

PwC Partner Says His Lack of Whiteness Stifled His Pay; Sues Firm

Ahhhhh, the race card. Just when you think it’s maxed out, another swipe is attempted.

Dunstan Pedropillai, is a partner in PwC’s London office who early in his career was labeled ‘a rising star’ and a ‘star performer’ is suing the firm because, he claims, he doesn’t fit in with the ‘collegiate club-like corporate culture.’ Simply put – his lack of whiteness and Britishness is holding him back. But things weren’t always this way, it seems. The firm reportedly went out of their way to admit him as a partner a year early in 1997. Everything was going swell until he returned from Japan in 2001 when all of a sudden his non-pale face, seemingly, started affecting his career:

‘The original culture of the firm is an extremely strong collegiate club-like corporate culture which has its roots in Anglo-Saxon male culture, which is the major composition of the firm.’ Of his return from Japan, he said: ‘It was as if they had already formed a view that I was not a ”member of the club” or that in some way my face did not fit. The firm felt they could not put me in front of blue-chip top tier clients – they felt as a non-white I didn’t look right.’

Of course it was entirely possible that Dunstan was slipping a bit:

By 2003 his rating at the firm had dropped to the bottom level available for a partner. In 2004 he received a bad appraisal for dating a colleague, Marina, now his wife, without revealing the seriousness of the relationship to his boss.

So we all know that dipping your pen in the company ink, while potentially tricky (not to mention common), is NBD and Dunstan was ultimately given a pass on this but still wasn’t satisfied and that’s when decided to threaten the firm with a suit. This was received rather coolly by PwC, who reciprocated with their own threat to fire him if he went ahead with the lawsuit slapping. He called P. Dubs bluff (apparently he still has his job) and now PwC is taking the gloves off, saying that Dunstan just started sucking and he should be thanking his lucky stars that he still has a job and his £933,480 salary:

Suzanne McKie, representing PwC, said the firm denied that Mr Pedropillai’s career stalled because of his ethnicity and put it down to his ‘poor people skills’. She said that the poor global economy meant Mr Pedropillai’s unit grew only marginally, and that two of his white peers were made redundant, while another, who had returned from working abroad at the same time as Mr Pedropillai, had been forced to move to Australia because there was no work for him in London. She said the £100,000, or 12 per cent, pay cut received by Mr Pedropillai last year was roughly in line with the eight per cent salary drop received by partners across the board and that he had a low role grade because he refused to accept any negative feedback.

£1million accountant who blames racism for limiting his pay [Daily Mail]

Leaders From the Big 4 Rang the Closing Bell Today

That is, they clapped while someone rang a bell, along with some other people. Try to contain your excitement.

It doesn’t appear to be too awkward. Not sure how Steve Howe got squeezed way over there but the Lehman thing probably doesn’t help. Thoughts on pretty much anything – trash talk amongst Barry and Bob, did John Veihmeyer need lifts?; did they all read Going Concern today? – are welcome at this time.

Suing Big 4 Auditors Hasn’t Gone as Well as Investors Hoped

Sure, there are settlements here and there but not the big KA-CHING! investors are looking for.

Lawsuits have been dismissed against Deloitte & Touche over its audits of mortgage financier Fannie Mae, as well as a case against PricewaterhouseCoopers accusing it of helping hide risks at insurer American International Group. KPMG settled a lawsuit stemming from its audits of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp, now part of Bank of America, for a relatively modest amount. “Every time somebody comes up with a new fraudulent scheme, auditors miss it,” said Andrea Kim, a partner at law firm Diamond McCarthy LLP in Houston who represents plaintiffs in auditor lawsuits. “The historical pattern is that they find a way to manage the litigation to limit their liability.”

Analysis: Big wins elude investors in auditor lawsuits [Reuters]

The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: PwC #73 (2011)

Next up on our F100BCTWF watch is the former home of the next great superhero, PwC who slid a couple a spots from last year’s #71 but this does extend the streak to seven years on the list. We’ll dispense with any more pleasantries and get right to the particulars.


PwC – Previous rank: #71. Why so great? Fortune cites “flexibility” (you read that Times article too?), “training” and “ethics” (although a more robust appropriate email refresher is probably needed).

Stats of note:
• New Jobs (1 year): -1,100
• % Job Growth (1 year): -4%
• % Voluntary Turnover: 11%
• No. of Job Openings at 1/13/2010: 9,144
• Most common salaried job: Manager/Supervisor – $86,826
• % Minorities: 27%
• % Women: 48%

Comparing with last year’s stats, things have dropped off a bit as new jobs, % job growth and average salary have all gone down while turnover has gone up. Percentage of minorities is unchanged while percentage of women is down a tick. The brightest spot (or biggest pain in some of your asses) is the number of job openings, which has nearly doubled from last year and is nearly triple of rival Deloitte’s current number of openings.

Earlier:
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Plante & Moran #26 (2011)
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Deloitte #63 (2011)
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: PricewaterhouseCoopers #71

Man with a ‘Passion’ for Charter Buses Managed to Dupe Moss Adams, Deloitte in Washington’s Largest Ponzi Scheme

Allegedly! Admittedly, we’re a little behind on this one but you know how it is. Anyway, your Ponzi scheme du jour comes by way of the great Northwest, where Frederick Darren Berg, who seems to have some sort of charter bus fetish, is being prosecuted for orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in Washington.

When he was at the University of Oregon in the 80s, Berg allegedly helped himself to his fraternity’s cash to fund a “charter bus venture” and then pleaded guilty to a check-kiting scheme with another bus company a few years later. After those nickel and dime failures, Fred was done messing and decided to really do this:

The 48-year-old founder and chief executive officer of Meridian Group is accused of defrauding hundreds of more than $100 million invested in his Seattle company’s mortgage funds between 2003 and 2010.

Prosecutors allege Berg spent tens of millions on a ritzy lifestyle, including a posh Mercer Island mansion, two yachts and two jets.

But investigators say Berg diverted a bigger chunk, estimated at $45 million, to create a luxury bus line that served tour groups and sports teams, including the Seahawks and the Oregon Ducks.

And we all know what happened to mortgage funds, don’t we? Okay, then. So your next question probably is, “how did the auditors miss this one?” Well!

Berg used some simple stratagems to mislead auditors at Moss Adams, a large Seattle-based firm, which produced audits for a trio of Meridian funds for three years.

The standard procedure is to send out confirmation letters to a random sample of mortgage borrowers and compare what they say they’ve paid with what the lender’s records say.

But Moss Adams didn’t notice most of the confirmations it sent out were going to post-office boxes and coming back with the same handwriting, said [bankruptcy trustee Mark] Calvert.

Berg had rented more than 20 P.O. boxes and had the mail forwarded to another address in Seattle. He was replying to the auditors’ queries himself, according to the indictment.

[Cringe] Oops. To be fair, auditors can’t be expected to be hand-writing experts…can they? Mr. Calvert seems to think so and told the Seattle Times that he plans on suing Moss Adams and Deloitte for their roles. Oh, right! How do they fit in? To wit:

Berg also hired Deloitte Financial Advisory Services to do a “valuation report” on funds V through VII, meant just for Meridian management. Meridian, however, used it to reassure investors, touting Deloitte’s conclusion “the sample mortgage pool appears to be of higher quality and better performance” than comparable loan portfolios.

But Calvert said Deloitte’s supposedly random sampling “was not completed as outlined” in its agreement with Meridian. He declined to be more specific.

Moss Adams and Deloitte would not comment on their work for Meridian.

Financial empire, luxurious lifestyle were built on a mirage [ST]

The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Deloitte #63 (2011)

Next up on Fortune’s “You wish you worked here” list, comes the newest future resident of 30 Rockefeller Center. A slight improvement for the Green Dot this year, as the firm jumped from 70 to 63. Let’s get right to it.


Deloitte – Previous rank: #70. Deloitte wins the race for fewer white people reports Fortune, “A third of its employees are nonwhite, the highest percentage of the Big Four.”

Stats of note:
• New Jobs (1 year): -552
• % Job Growth (1 year): -1%
• % Voluntary Turnover: 11%
• No. of Job Openings at 1/13/2010: 3,511
• Most common salaried job: Senior/Senior Consultant – $81,622
• % Minorities: 33%
• % Women: 43%

Compared to last year, new jobs, job growth, number of jobs (last year it was 11k), average salary and percentage of women are all down. Turnover ticked slightly up as did % of minorities. So while Deloitte manages to be the top Big 4 firm in the ranking, we’re guessing that the brass is a little miffed by the wide margin between themselves and P&M. Still no tweet from Jim Quigley on this but he seems a little distracted with Davos to be notice a seemingly permanent spot on the F100BCTWF, “Oh, gosh. That old thing? That’s great, just change the number and dates on the press release. And try to get Salzberg to say something a little less cliché.”

Too late, Jim.

Earlier:
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Plante & Moran #26 (2011)
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Deloitte #70

Blog by Wife of PwC Partner (aka Chief Spending Officer) Details Failed Attempts at More Frugal Lifestyle

Times are still tough for many but few take to the blogosphere to share their tales of coupon clipping, pics from staycations and scouring the racks at Filene’s Basement. One person who felt the need to share her frugal efforts with the masses is Lisa Unwin, the “Austerity Mum” and wife of PwC’s head of consulting in the UK, Ashley Unwin. How tough have things been at Casa de Unwin? Well, it all started when the couple purchased a house in East London that reportedly cost ‘squillions,’ and Ms Unwin thought that maybe a more modest life was in order:

Musing on how to cut the cost of family holidays she suggests forgoing private helicopter flights or cancelling that half-term break in the Maldives in favour of returning to your weekend home in the French Alps.

The closest her family comes to the wartime notion of make do and mend is for the husband to have his designer Berluti shoes resoled – at a specialist cobblers on Bond Street, she reveals.

Now that’s sacrifice! However one thing her “Chief Spending Officer” husband wasn’t able to give up are his handmade shirts:

“Not even Prada is good enough any more, can’t recall why,” she reveals.

Then, there’s the ankle-biters:

[H]er two children – nicknamed the “diva-in-waiting” and the “smallest man with the biggest attitude” – have come to believe it is normal “to have a seat that turns into a bed if you’re on a flight for more than three hours”.

For her part, Ms. Unwin was thinking about going back to work (she’s a former Deloitte communications director) but there were conditions:

Claiming she would “love” to go back to work, she bemoans how the cost of childcare makes it impractical. “It would need to be something that I could do between the hours of 10 and two – well, actually 11 and two three days a week to enable me to go the gym,” she concludes.

Sadly, Ash wasn’t so keen on the attention the blog was getting, “Mr Unwin is understood to be acutely embarrassed by the disclosures and she has now agreed to take down the blog.” Lisa is looking for ‘another way to write’ but our guess is a freelance gig with Going Concern is out of the question. Even still, the offer stands Lisa – email us.

Will a Former PwC Employee’s Superhero Aspirations Lead to Trouble?

As we’ve discussed, some farewell emails can be morbidly melodramatic while others are a bitter “good riddance” that makes you pity the poor bastards that will hear your former colleague’s cynical musings.

The latest Big 4 sendoff comes courtesy of PwC and we only share it with you because, well, we don’t know what to make of our hero’s crime fighting dreams.

Friends,

It is with a great mixture of emotions that I leave the firm today. As many of you know, I never imagined myself as a mild-mannered accountant. I always thought that there was a greater destiny out there for me, a tale of wonder and adventure, a story mostr careful consideration and consultation with my closest companions, I’ve decided to leave PwC in order to become a costumed vigilante of the night.

It wasn’t an easy decision; declaring war on crime never is. There will be some hard nights ahead of me as I craft the tools necessary to take back this city. Intense martial arts training and an iron-clad will might not be enough, but it’s all we got. Where evil lurks in the hearts of men, where innocents are lost and forgotten, where citizens call out for a savior, I will be there. Rest easy, Baltimore, your avenging knight has arrived.

I am vengeance. I am the night. I. AM. BATMAN.

[Bruce Wayne]
[brucewayne]@gmail.com

P.S. Could everyone do me a solid and keep my new secret identity to themselves? It’ll make avenging the weak a lot easier if super-villains aren’t bugging me at my new job all the time. Thanks.

Okaaay, so lots to discuss here. For starters, the lack of originality is dreadful. Batman is TAKEN you DOLT. Secondly, Batman is a scientist; you’ve got an accounting degree. Unless you’ve been whipping out a engineering/chemistry/physics set in your cubicle testing gadgets, we’re pretty sure a cap gun will be more effective than anything you’ll be strapped with. Thirdly, this is BALTIMORE we’re talking about. We’ve only spent a little bit of time there but if The Wire is as realistic as its creators say it is, this dude will last all of two seconds. Now, it’s possible that this could be a comic nerd trying to give his friends a laugh on his way out the door but what if we are dealing with another Phoenix Jones?

So if our hero is serious, we’re guessing you can count on a future report from the local Baltimore news detailing the injuries suffered by the masked avenger/former accountant.

Layoff Watch ’11: KPMG Cuts IT Support Staff

Fyi- I’m forced to write this on my mobile so anyone that notes typos can piss off.

Anyhoo, for whatever reason, the KPMG beat is awfully hot today. This latest scoop we have is the unfortunate news that layoffs have reared their ugly head in Monty:

Caleb,

No chatter on the ~200 layoffs at KPMG IT support staff in Montvale this past Friday whose positions went to IBM outsourcing?

Oddly enough, we did hear about this just yesterday and hadn’t had the time to check it out. Now that we’ve been spurred into action, this confirms the original tip we received about the IT staff and that the work was going to IBM. This is the first news we received about the staff in Montvale, the original news we received was with regard to the New York office, a staff of approximately 17, we were told.

These in-house IT layoffs feel oddly familiar to the cuts made by PwC late last summer, who also planned to outsource those positions. P. Dubs also stated that they would offer some professionals other opportunities within the firm and would be creating a number of new jobs in the Tampa area, where those cuts occurred. So far there hasn’t been any indication that KPMG was doing something similar.

A message with KPMG spokesman Dan Ginsburg’s office was not immediately returned. We’ll keep you updated with any further details.

Compensation Watch ’11: KPMG Transactions and Restructuring Services May Get Some Extra Love

From the mailbag:

Thought y’all might be interested in hearing about a practice specific mid-year salary adjustment announced today [Monday]. Transactions and Restructuring (aka Transaction Services/TS; 750 people nationwide) had a national update call today during which, the partner in charge, Dan Tiemann [a Top 25 Consultant, no less], announced that he is very close to having firm leadership approve a mid-year comp adjustment for up to 5% for all members of the practice.

He mentioned that he is aware of the PwC iPad program and the Deloitte midyear raises and that it’s time that KPMG (well, at least the T&R practice) did something as well. This is in addition to the staff bonus program announced before xmas, and will be in addition to merit raises/incentive comp later this year

He said he’s well aware that somebody who wants to leave for a salary bump (as myself and many of my colleagues are considering) will not be deterred by a paltry 5%, but that he thinks the practice needed to do something to “show appreciation” for those who have sacrificed weekends and vacations during the past few months.

As our tipster notes, this is not yet approved by the brass but notes that “the recent barrage of defections” may have been a motivating factor. Also, our source doubted that anything like this would occur for large practices like audit or tax, “there is hope for the rest of advisory or other specialty practices.” If you hear any hopefulness for your practice – advisory, speciality or otherwise – email us.

KPMG’s Latest “Green Initiative” Has One Employee Demanding Sherpas

[caption id="attachment_24110" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Clearly a KPMG auditor; all the supplies are blue."][/caption]

As many of you are aware, schlepping around a laptop, supplies and God knows what else is standard operating procedure for many Big 4 employees. If you work in New York, this annoyance is compounded by the fact that you have to coordinate all this stuff in an awkward balancing act in order to walk (at least partially) to your desired location. Even if your engagement budget allows you to take a cab, the annoyance factor is high.

Unfortunately, this has now been made worse (never mind the slick sidewalks for two), according to a tipster who has a beef with the New York office of KPMG’s latest attempt to save the planet:

I don’t know why this set me off the way it did, but this really made me very angry so I thought I’d send it in to you to post for open internet mockery. Now in addition to carrying around a laptop, printers, the new second monitors, binders etc all over the city, KPMG expects me to strap a MUG to myself and heaven forfend I use a “Guest Mug” because then how will I compete in this swell “Original Mug Contest”?

I’m 115 pounds, I don’t have the body mass to deal with what is gradually turning into some sort of fully equipped mountain climbing expedition. KPMG needs to start handing out sherpas. Immediately after this email went out, about three different conversations involving stockpiling paper cups in various drawers started around me. What is 500K cups anyways, about half a tree? My free cup of crummy coffee in my paper cup that requires next to no effort to get is the high point of my day, so screw you KPMG Green Initiative.

Here’s the email describing the initiative (sorry for the disjointed look, we had to clip it twice) that caused our tipster to fly off the handle.

So not only does insufficient auditing space have their unforeseen repercussions, the quantity of stuff that auditors are asked to drag with them is reaching critical mass. No lives appear to be in danger yet but one has to wonder where the breaking point is. Your concerns and reactions are welcome at this time.