Footnotes: Grant Thornton Calls Out Big 4 on Legal Services; Under Bus, Accountant Thrown; How’s Your Math? | 10.06.14

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

Grant Thornton queries Big Four’s legal services push Scott Barnes, UK chief executive at Grant Thornton, said: “For us, expanding into legal services would create some conflicts. This is something the big four don’t seem to have a problem with.” [FT]

"Accountant complaining about being thrown under bus" is equivalent to "Dog bites man." [T&G] 

Yellen an unknown to 3 out of 4 Americans Appears reasonable. 5-year-olds are more interesting. [The Hill]

I had no idea Rush Limbaugh needed help assassinating his own character.

We're linking to this Business Insider post that simply rips off LinkedIn's Top 25 Accounting Schools post because it opens with: "If you've always been good at math" [BI]

That undercover cop isn't going to ID himself and a bunch of other popular misconceptions. [Information is Beautiful]

Audit Fees for Public Companies Up 4.5% ICYMI. [CFO]

Then there's this:

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Former Pastor Figures Eighth Commandment Is Overrated, Steals from Nonprofit

It takes a certain kind of person to defraud a non-profit organization. In a word: scumbag. Now consider the idea of a pastor of a church defrauding a non-profit organization. A non-profit organization that is tasked with providing cash and food for those in dire need. This person would be David Croyle, the former pastor of Stahl Mennonite Church in Johnstown, PA.

Croyle embezzled around $18,000 from St. Francis Sharing and Caring Inc. from 2005 to 2008. We figure he Either came to the conclusion that doing the Good Lord’s work was incredibly overrated or that he just plain needed the money. Seriously though, $18k? Did he really want a slightly used Honda Civic or something?


Regardless of the motive, Croyle has been charged with “56 counts each of theft by deception, failure to make required disposition of funds, theft and receiving stolen property,” according to the Daily American.

Part of Croyle’s duties at St. Francis was to determine eligible individuals, so he created C&A Management Services. Magically this company was “eligible” and then he requested checks payable to the company. Eventually someone found this a little fishy and hired Wessel & Co. a local accounting firm who discovered the embezzlement.

Somewhere God is shaking his head and somewhere else entirely, Sue Sachdeva is thinking, “Was this guy even trying?”

Police: pastor swindled nonprofit [Daily American]

Is KPMG’s Song Writing Team the Same as E&Y’s?

8ball.jpgNo doubt that you remember E&Y’s Grammy-worthy attempt at a theme song/torture method from last week.

We have now discovered that KPMG also thought this was worthy of the firm’s resources. The only problem we find is that the songs sound oddly similar in melody, atrocious use of harmony, etc. This kind of artistic double-agentry between the firms only reaffirms are suspicions about the firms working together in some sort of oligopolic conspiracy of which the purpose is, we haven’t figured out, except maybe to perpetuate the use of Excel.
After the jump, we’ve provided links to both songs here so that you can provide your expert analysis on which firm has the best song. And by best, we obviously mean drives you to agony similar to Alex DeLarge/Beethoven-esque levels. In addition, feel free to provide your favorite lyrics in the comments.