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Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Big 4 Consulting Salaries; Accounting For Dummies; PwC Boomerangs | 3.27.23

cat and sunflowers

They just had to use this picture, didn’t they?

South Carolina’s comptroller quits after a $3.5 billion accounting error

Alright, here are some other headlines for ya.

Deloitte, Accenture, McKinsey: Who Are The Top Consulting Firms For B-School Students?

The world’s largest accounting and professional services firms in terms of revenue and workforce, these prestigious firms are renowned for offering high salaries with a generous bonus structure.

Deloitte is top of the list, and MBA salaries there are competitive. Deloitte Strategy & Analytics (S&A) offers MBA graduates base salaries of $175,000; Deloitte Consulting provides up to $163,000; Deloitte Federal $128,000; Deloitte Government & Public Services $117,000.

MBA consultants at Deloitte Human Capital and Deloitte Tech earn $160,000, while master’s level consultants earn base salaries of up to $105,000 at Deloitte Consulting and around $26,250 in performance bonuses.

Ernst and Young (EY) comes in second, likely due to its top consulting salaries. MBA consultants at EY can expect base consulting salaries of $175,000, while an EY consultant salary for master’s level graduates is $85,000.

KPMG offers MBA consultants $145,000 in base salary and performance bonuses of up to $17,400 and a signing bonus of up to $35,000, while master’s-level graduates earn $78,000 per year and can expect a signing bonus of up to $10,000.

PwC MBA consultants earn base salaries of $175,000 on joining the firm and up to $40,000 in performance bonuses, and master’s graduates at PwC earn a base salary of $85,000, with a signing bonus of $5,000.

Deloitte got yelled at by China:

China will strengthen regulations on the certified public accountant sector, Deputy Finance Minister Zhu Zhongming told visiting Deloitte Global Chair Sharon Thorne after the company was hit by a record fine.

The ministry announced on March 17 that it suspended the operations of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd.’s Beijing office for three months and imposed a 212 million yuan ($30.9 million) fine over lapses in its auditing work of bad-debt manager China Huarong Asset Management Co.

Zhu urged Deloitte to learn a lesson from the punishment, correct mistakes and improve audit quality, according to a statement from the ministry on Sunday. It added China supports Deloitte and other global accounting firms in operating legally in the nation, and that they will be treated equally with domestic accountants.

PwC did some poaching in Australia:

PwC has embarked on a mini-raid of its fellow professional services firms in recent weeks to add a number of partners across its Australian offices.

Ellie Atkinson joins as a strategy and transformation partner from EY in Brisbane, Lorena Sosa crosses from Grant Thornton as a tax partner in Sydney, Kylie Watson becomes a cyber partner after previous stints at IBM and Deloitte, and Nikhil de Silva returns to the PwC partnership in Melbourne from Sayers.

Note: Half of these new acquisitions are former PwCers. Sosa originally joined PwC in 2003 and left for ten years at Grant Thornton, de Silva started at PwC way back in the 90s and made partner, left for Salesforce, went to Sayers, and did some time at AWS before returning to PwC.

Reuters has a carbon accounting exclusive if anyone cares:

Banks are divided over how to account for carbon emissions linked to their capital markets business, sources told Reuters, with some riled by a proposal that 100% would be attributed to them rather than to investors who buy the financial instruments.

An industry-wide methodology was due to be announced in late 2022, but four sources with direct knowledge of the process said this has been stalled by the row over how much of the carbon emissions associated with a deal should be booked by each bank.

Reaching an agreement is seen as a crucial step for the financial industry as pressure grows on it to do more to help with the transition to net-zero, with a study by United Nations scientists this week urging a rapid phasing out of fossil fuels.

Without a methodology in place, investors are being hampered in tracking the carbon footprint of individual banks, which is an increasingly important part of their shareholder remit.

Some other stuff:

That’s all I’ve got for this fine Monday. Those of you in the final stretch, stay strong!