The Big Four firms, who count the largest companies in the world as clients, have set ambitious goals to promote more women and minorities into managerial and partner roles since 2020.
Those efforts were aimed partly at attracting a broader pool of prospective accountants by establishing a more visible and diverse group of future mentors and trailblazers.
Nikki Watson, a CPA exam coach and managing partner of the Winston CPA Group, said she will be watching how unraveling DEI will alter the career decisions of Black and other minority staff and future accountants. Professionals will have to decide whether they still want to work for the firms or take their skills and talents elsewhere, she said.
“Am I going to be like a token Black or Brown person who is under some microscope or treated differently just because I don’t really fit into the realm of what their workforce should look like,” Watson said.
“Us self-claiming some [artificial general intelligence] milestone, that’s just nonsensical benchmark hacking to me,” Nadella told Patel.
Instead, the CEO argued that we should be looking at whether AI is generating real-world value instead of mindlessly running after fantastical ideas like AGI.
To Nadella, the proof is in the pudding. If AI actually has economic potential, he argued, it’ll be clear when it starts generating measurable value.
“So, the first thing that we all have to do is, when we say this is like the Industrial Revolution, let’s have that Industrial Revolution type of growth,” he said.
“The real benchmark is: the world growing at 10 percent,” he added. “Suddenly productivity goes up and the economy is growing at a faster rate. When that happens, we’ll be fine as an industry.”
Our analysis of the fourth edition of Deloitte’s Global Future of Cyber Survey, which surveyed nearly 1,200 cyber decision-makers at the director level or higher, identified eight potential risks specific to gen AI, ranging from integrity risks like hallucinations, to social engineering attacks, to inadequate governance of gen AI strategies. Original analysis of that data for this research finds that respondents are equally worried about all of them, with 77% saying they were concerned “to a large extent” about how these risks may impact their cybersecurity strategies.
In property and casualty, if some of the recently announced tariffs with Canada and/or Mexico are enacted, the severity of auto and homeowner claims could increase due to increased prices for aftermarket auto parts and construction materials. As a reference, according to PwC research, over 40% of US auto parts are imported from Mexico. We also estimate that a 25% tariff on Canadian products could result in approximately $73 billion a year in surcharges.
And then they said:
Similarly in commercial lines, inflationary impacts can vary widely across sectors based on the magnitude and scope (e.g., countries and exemptions) of new tariffs. For instance, if the cost of raw materials — ranging from oil and natural gas to timber and minerals — increases, public budgets may become increasingly strained, raising the risk of defaults. This is likely to pressure insurers that focus on the public sector.
On February 7, 2025, Blue & Co., LLC (“Blue”) filed a notice of data breach with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights after discovering that information in the company’s possession was subject to unauthorized access. In this notice, Blue explains that the incident resulted in an unauthorized party being able to access consumers’ sensitive information. Upon completing its investigation, Blue began sending out data breach notification letters to all individuals whose information was affected by the recent data security incident.
Elon Musk says “Yeah, sure” to auditing the Federal Reserve, reports CNN:
Elon Musk is keen on auditing the Federal Reserve, the independent agency that makes critical decisions on interest rates that reverberate throughout the US economy.
Musk, the world’s richest man who is also overseeing a mass restructuring of the federal government, isn’t referring to the Fed’s $6.8 trillion balance sheet. The Fed’s finances and operations are already audited extensively by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and an independent accounting firm. Musk is talking about the Fed’s monetary policy decisions.
But auditing the Fed’s monetary policy raises questions on the importance of the central bank’s independence, especially as President Donald Trump shakes up the federal bureaucracy.
Asked if the Fed should be audited at an annual gathering of conservatives Thursday, the Tesla CEO said, “Yeah, sure” without elaborating. It was the second time this month that Musk expressed support for the idea.
Oh God, this shit again. The Fed is audited, by Deloitte. And last I checked (granted I gave up Fed-bashing as a hobby around 2015), they have their own rules so it’s not going to look like a regular public company audit. But by all means, have at it.
Talking to reporters on Air Force One, President Trump on Wednesday night mentioned going to Fort Knox. Repeatedly.
“We’re going to go into Fort Knox to make sure the gold is still there,” he said in response to a question about possible Pentagon cuts. “We hope everything is fine with Fort Knox, the fabled Fort Knox, but we’re going to go to Fort Knox and make sure the gold is still there,” he said.
Got that? They’re going to Fort Knox. “If the gold isn’t there we’re going to be very upset,” said Trump.
It’s too bad all the old conspiracy forums from the 00s-10s are dead, there used to be some real litty ones with ideas about what happened to the gold. One involved a heist in the tunnels beneath the New York Fed.
UK firms are increasingly defaulting on fines imposed for the late filing of annual accounts, with recent data exposing significant gaps in major companies’ collection efforts.
Over the past six years, between 2018/19 and 2023/24, companies have left an estimated £386 million of the £785 million levied in fines uncollected. The shortfall has prompted industry observers and regulators to question the effectiveness of the current enforcement mechanisms designed to ensure timely submission of accounts.
A key factor contributing to the low recovery rate is the financial condition of many of the fined companies. A considerable number of these firms are either insolvent or operate as “ghost” companies – entities set up during the Covid-19 pandemic to secure government loans, which subsequently become dormant or dissolve without ever settling their fines. In such cases, the penalties, although legally imposed, serve little practical purpose as the funds remain unrecovered.
Crowe partner Johnathan Dudley said the statistics are “alarming” but warned that regulators can’t go around threatening these companies to pay unless they’re prepared to actually make them pay. “You can threaten what you like, but if you do not engage teeth then this will continue,” he said.
Alright that’s it for now, kinda quiet out there. Feel free to email or text any time if you have something to say, a tip, or a story idea.
Company report pace frustrates accounting experts [Reuters]
Author and lawyer Michael Young jokes about the days when it took more time to get some companies’ financial statements than it did for Columbus to discover America. Alas, those days are still here.
Google May Reap $1 Billion Tax Benefit from Motorola Deal [CFOJ]
Robert Willens, an independent tax and accounting expert who is president of Robert Willens LLC in New York, told CFO Journal that the NOLs are “a really significant item.” The former Lehman B said Motorola has about $3 billion in NOLs. While the IRS restricts the entire amount of NOLs that can be applied after a change in ownership, Google should still be able to use a portion of them over time. Willens estimates Motorola could reduce Google’s tax bills by about $1 billion over the next six years, on an undiscounted basis.
PwC faces fine over JPMorgan audit [FT]
After a year-long investigation into the audit firm, the Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board is taking disciplinary action against PwC for failing to meet the professional standards expected of it, and failing to report “with due skill, care and diligence”.
Memo to Staff: Don’t Panic [WSJ]
From company memos to “town hall” meetings, corporate leaders are looking at how they can jack up morale in the work place. At the same time, many are dealing with employees already skeptical of management—given the rounds of layoffs in recent years—and must choose their strategies carefully.
Interpublic sells half of its Facebook stake [FT]
Interpublic, the advertising group, sold half of its 0.4 per cent stake in Facebook for $133m to an undisclosed buyer. The sale is likely to put the spotlight back on to the secondary market for private company stock. The loosely regulated market attracted scrutiny from regulators earlier this year after shares in internet companies such as Facebook and Groupon began trading at multibillion-dollar valuations without public listings.
A war tax? It’s still not a bad idea [WaPo]
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney last Wednesday caught my eye when he talked about members of Congress, currently vocal about the deficit, who were on Capitol Hill over the past decade and voted for unpaid large tax cuts but “put two wars on the credit card without paying for them.” That last phrase reflected words used in 2007 by several House Democrats who wanted to institute a war surtax to pay for the then-increasing costs of U.S. activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. These days, one of them, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), believes such a levy should be on the agenda of the debt-reduction “supercommittee.”
Corporations are people too! [Tax Update Blog]
Mitt Romney had a great time at the Iowa State Fair.
IRS: Woman claims 19 non-existent children [SVMN]
The IRS says Coronel claimed that all the children had been born to her at a Los Angeles hospital on Dec. 11, 2002, then obtained fraudulent Social Security numbers for them and claimed them as dependents. Hospital records show she gave birth to one child, a boy, on that date.
KPMG Foundation Awards $400,000 in Scholarships to 40 Minority Accounting Doctoral Scholars [KPMG]
The students include 10 new recipients and 30 students whose scholarships have been renewed. Each scholarship is valued at $10,000 and renewable annually for up to five years.
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