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Did This Deloitte U.K. Partner Unjustly Rip Young Staffers, Or Did He Speak the Truth?

Posted on by Jason Bramwell
Alexander Curry

“Now, if you want to do what you want [with your time] I suggest that you become millionaires, authors or bums. Failing that, I would like to emphasize the rules of the road for scheduling.”

— Alexander Curry, partner and U.K. lead of Deloitte’s strategy and business design practice, Monitor Deloitte, in an internal email sent to junior staff in early July that was seen by the website eFinancialCareers.

This part of the email was prefaced by Curry writing that he recently met with some young’uns in the practice who Curry said told him “what they did with their time was up to them, based on their interests and preferences,” according to eFinancialCareers.

We often like to poke fun at the Big 4 and the top midtier firms for hyping how great their work/life balance is during recruiting trips to college campuses, then reeling in a boatful of future capital market servants, and overworking them as first-years to the point where they barely have enough time to eat a meal or use the bathroom, let alone have a life outside of work.

But in this instance I don’t think Curry is telling junior staffers they have to be chained to their desks 24/7. It seems to be an issue of Gen Y or Gen Z Deloitters who may be a little too picky about what projects they want to work on. Why else would Curry have said, “I would like to emphasize the rules of the road for scheduling” in his email? And what are his “rules of the road” for being assigned to a project? The article from eFinancialCareers didn’t publish that part of the email.

I could be wrong but I didn’t think first- or even second-years have the clout to reject project assignments. More often than not, these projects are not going to be fun and cool and interesting. Willingly putting yourself on the bench because a project doesn’t meet your “preferences” will result in a one-way ticket to Unemployment Land.

Regardless, though, after seeing some of the salaries that first- and second-years make at Deloitte U.K., they’re much closer to being bums than ever becoming a millionaire.

Deloitte consulting partner tells juniors their life is not their own [eFinancialCareers]

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Deloitte Survey: Once this Ship Turns Around, People Are Going to Start Jumping

Deloitte’s 2010 Ethics & Workplace Survey tells us what most of you have been thinking since 2007 (if you haven’t been laid off that is), that you are GTFO of your current job. Everyone is just sitting tight until the economy to turns around.

While that might not exactly be a newsflash, the reasons for the anxious ship jumpers is primarily due to lack of trust and communication from their companies. Deloitte knows a little bit about this since the firm admitted to handling its own communication regarding layoffs “poorly.”

According to Deloitte LLP’s fourth annual Ethics & Workplace Survey, one-third of employed Americans plan to look for a new job when the economy gets better. Of this group of respondents, 48 percent cite a loss of trust in their employer and 46 percent say that a lack of transparent communication from their company’s leadership are their reasons for looking for new employment at the end of the recession. Additionally, 65 percent of Fortune 1000 executives who are concerned employees will be job hunting in the coming months believe trust will be a factor in a potential increase in voluntary turnover.

So. The question of the day is, are you leaving your firm or company as soon as this economy takes off? You have to admit, you could waiting awhile. Of course since it’s compensation season for the major accounting firms, it may not even come to that.

SEC Not Amused By Deloitte’s Failure to Produce Documents Related to Company That Held Their Audit Workpapers Hostage

Remember Longtop Financial Technologies? Deloitte resigned as auditors of the Chinese company back in May after LFT took some actions that were, shall we say, unusual for an audit client. Among them, “interference by certain members of Longtop management in DTT’s audit process; and […] the unlawful detention of DTT’s audit files.” And there may be some financial statement fraud going on, to boot. What’s even slightly weirder is Deloitte’s resignt to Longtop’s Audit Committee that laid out the specifics:

[A]s a result of intervention by the Company’s officials including the Chief Operating Officer, the confirmation process was stopped amid serious and troubling new developments including: calls to banks by the Company asserting that Deloitte was not their auditor; seizure by the Company’s staff of second round bank confirmation documentation on bank premises; threats to stop our staff leaving the Company premises unless they allowed the Company to retain our audit files then on the premises; and then seizure by the Company of certain of our working papers.

Right. The auditors-almost-taken-hostage situation. Quite a doozy, this one. Based on the history between Deloitte and Longtop, one would think that Green Dot would jump at any chance to exact a little revenge on these shady bastards. NOPE!


From the crack squad at the SEC:

The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed a subpoena enforcement action against Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu CPA Ltd. for failing to produce documents related to the SEC’s investigation into possible fraud by the Shanghai-based public accounting firm’s longtime client Longtop Financial Technologies Limited.

According to the SEC’s application and supporting papers filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the SEC issued a subpoena on May 27, 2011, and D&T Shanghai was required to produce documents by July 8, 2011. Although D&T Shanghai is in possession of vast amounts of documents responsive to the subpoena, it has not produced any documents to the SEC to date. As a result, the Commission is unable to gain access to information that is critical to an investigation that has been authorized for the protection of public investors.

“Compliance with an SEC subpoena is not an option, it is a legal obligation,” said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “The ability of the SEC to conduct swift and thorough investigations requires that subpoena recipients promptly comply with that legal obligation. Subpoena recipients who refuse to comply should expect serious legal consequences.”

Maybe the email/hand-written letter sent by carrier pigeon (whatever method of communication the Commission is using these days) got lost OR maybe no one at Deloitte Shanghai was in the translating mood that day but it seems slightly strange that Deloitte would just blow this off especially since Longtop screwed them 70 ways to Sunday. Of course these documents could show that Deloitte was really a bunch of pansies and we’re letting LFT run the show until the gross negligence got to the point that they simply couldn’t ignore it anymore. It’s anybody’s guess, really.

UPDATE: The Journal reports that Deloitte claims to be “caught in the middle of conflicting demands by two government regulators,” which could be seen as extremely convenient.

SEC Files Subpoena Enforcement Action Against Deloitte & Touche in Shanghai [SEC]
Court Filing [SEC]
Also see: S.E.C. Asks Court to Force a Release of Papers From China [NYT]