Hey and a good snowy morning to you. Dug up a little bit of news for you to get you nice and informed. If you have a tip or story for us, whatever it may be, I’d love to hear from you! Email or text anytime, tipsters are always anonymous (and appreciated).
Andersen is for sure definitely imminently going public, reports Bloomberg:
Andersen Group Inc., the US arm of the professional services firm that succeeded the shuttered accounting giant Arthur Andersen, is seeking to raise $176 million in an initial public offering.
The company plans to market 11 million shares for $14 to $16 each, according to its filing Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The UK government wants to sniff out corrupt accountants (and lawyers, and bankers), announcing the plan this morning:
Corrupt insiders and criminal networks will be brought to justice by a strengthened specialist police unit and tougher safeguards across the public sector, as government unveils a landmark anti-corruption strategy.
Launching today, the new strategy sets out how the UK will shut out corrupt actors, disrupt dirty money and restore integrity in public life. It targets corrupt networks at home and abroad to strengthen national security while driving growth.
The National Crime Agency will be in on it:
Action to root out corruption in the UK will step up through a major expansion of the Domestic Corruption Unit (DCU) based in the City of London Police. Backed by £15 million in new funding, specialist officers will take on more investigations and support local forces to detect and disrupt bribery and money laundering networks nationwide – building on probes this year into corrupt actors across local councils, housing and financial services.
The strategy will target professional enablers – the corrupt lawyers, accountants and bankers – who help dirty money flow. By expanding the use of sanctions and scaling up the NCA’s capability and coordination, enablers will be hunted down and prosecuted for moving criminal profits.
PwC Canada is still on the audit deficiency train after receiving perfect scores in earlier years and getting busted sharing answers on internal training during those flawless years. The good news is that deficiency rate is down from the last inspection. Reports Canadian Accountant:
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the United States found deficiencies in almost half of the audits it inspected of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Canada. According to the latest inspection report from the PCAOB, the Canadian accounting firm lowered its deficiency rate from 63 to 43 per cent in two years, for the seven audits inspected by the US audit watchdog
Across the pond, non-Big 4 firms find themselves getting a bigger bite of the PIE audit market. Says ICAEW:
The UK audit market continues to diversify according to the Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) latest Audit Market and Competition Update.
Non-Big Four audit firms were responsible for 40% of all public interest entity (PIE) audits in 2024, up 1% from 2023, and almost doubling since 2020, when their market share was 22%. That includes 13% of FTSE 350 audit engagements, which is relatively stable compared to the rest of the market.
A years-long fraud perpetrated by a 55-year-old payroll clerk at a small business reminds us of the golden rule: don’t have just a single person in charge of this stuff.
An account manager stole over £240,000 from the company she worked for while it was forced to make redundancies and struggled to make ends meet following the pandemic. Sharon Wathan, 55, of Lon-yr-helyg, Bridgend, has been jailed for the offences. Nigel Fryer, prosecuting, told Newport Crown Court how Wathan had worked for CMU Management for a substantial period of over 24 years. The court heard how she ran the payroll management and had sole responsibility over invoices.
This stuff really is Audit 101. Hello, Opportunity:
During sentencing, Judge Matthew Porter-Bryant said: “It started as an unsophisticated matter and simply spiralled. You in effect did not realise quite how large the fraud had grown. You persisted with it because you could get away with it, you persisted for a number of years. It may have been opportunistic at the beginning but it certainly wasn’t years later when you were caught.”
Wathan has been sentenced to two years and six months in prison.
The AICPA does some advocating on passthrough entities, Journal of Accountancy has the scoop:
The AICPA is seeking changes to tax reporting requirements for partnerships and S corporations, collectively known as passthrough entities (PTEs), including more notice for changes to those requirements and more time to respond.
The recommendations, made in a letter sent Thursday, encourage Treasury and the IRS “to adopt a proactive vetting process that promotes transparency, simplification, and coordination to ease the administrative burden of PTE reporting,” Michelle Zou, the AICPA’s senior manager–Tax Policy & Advocacy, said in a news release. “While these improvements would benefit all areas of tax, they are especially critical for PTEs, where the administrative challenges are particularly detrimental.”
Thomson Reuters’ 2025 State of the Corporate Tax Department report has dropped and the headline is that 58% of tax departments are underresourced (up from 51% in 2024). With pretty charts!
That’s all I have for you today. Stay warm out there, you.
