Go out of your way to communicate to your top performers that you value their work and want to keep them. A few years ago, we reviewed research from one of the world’s leading accounting firms. They conducted interviews with top performers who were leaving the firm. What did they discover? Over half of the best people who left had no idea that the company thought they were important or even that the company wanted them to keep working there! They did not leave because they wanted more money; they just wanted to know that the company cared about them.
43-year-old David Ibels, missing KPMG Australia partner
A KPMG spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia that some of his colleagues are taking part in the search.’We are in close contact with and are providing support for his family during this difficult time of uncertainty,’ they said.
‘Many of our people are participating in the police search.
‘We are all hopeful that David is located shortly and is safe and well, and we especially send our thoughts to his family.’
Over the past three years, Mr Ibels was a key figure in the development of KPMG Australia’s $800million Brisbane headquarters at Heritage Lanes, in the city’s CBD.
The building, developed by property giant Mirvac, is powered by renewable electricity and has net zero carbon emissions.
Just one month ago, Mr Ibels was proudly posting about the achievement on LinkedIn.
A controversial author and professor is scheduled to give a talk to Deloitters across the pond on Halloween and people aren’t happy. The Telegraph:
Deloitte staff have expressed concern after the company invited a professor who described Winston Churchill as a white supremacist to give a talk about identity to employees.
Professor Kehinde Andrews, whose latest book is entitled The Psychosis of Whiteness, is set to give a talk to Deloitte staff on 31 October about “identity and authenticity and black excellence” as a part of a series of lectures the City consultancy firm hosted for black history month.
Mr Andrews, a professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, described Winston Churchill as the “perfect embodiment of white supremacy” and the British Empire as “far worse than the Nazis” at an event in Cambridge in 2021. In the same year, discussing Queen Elizabeth II, he said on Good Morning Britain: “The Queen is probably the number one symbol of white supremacy in the entire world.”
A Deloitte source told The Telegraph: “My colleagues and I find Deloitte’s association with Andrews, a prolific anti-white race activist, highly concerning and uncomfortable.”
“He recently published a book called ‘The Psychosis of Whiteness’, in which he implies that whiteness, and therefore white people, are mentally ill by nature.”
“His views are unpleasant and divisive, and he should not be anywhere near an important British company like Deloitte.”
Reaction to the Telegraph article:
If Telegraph writers engaged Kehinde Andrews’ work in good faith they’d learn a lot from him. May even agree with some of his thoughts and critiques. In not engaging with his work yet expressing fury and demanding his ‘cancellation’, they prove KA’s assertions to be accurate. https://t.co/5X9oTf7r6c
Meanwhile, global accounting firm Deloitte posted a LinkedIn message, signed by the leaders of its Israeli business, expressing “support for our fellow citizens on the home front and those on the front lines”. Dozens of employees from elsewhere in the region sought to disassociate themselves. Mutasem Dajani, chief executive of Deloitte Middle East, then condemned “needless human suffering” and highlighted support of humanitarian efforts for Palestinians.
Some commentators stressed that companies needed to be consistent — if they have made a statement on Ukraine, they should do so for Israel and Palestine, for example.
[DEI vet Bo Young] Lee disagrees. “The unfortunate thing about our world now is that something is happening every single day. This idea of consistency is fundamentally flawed . . . a company would be making a statement every single day. Make a statement when it impacts your business, you have something to say about it and you can have a meaningful impact.”
A member unit of the global network of multinational professional services firm Ernst and Young (EY) has opened a new office in the Philippines, expanding its footprint here with a second branch located in Cebu City.
Global Delivery Services (EY-GDS) said the opening of its Cebu center last Oct. 11 represented a significant scaling up of operations in the Philippines, starting with 25 individuals in 2015 and which has since grown to over 5,000 this year.
“The Philippines is a vital component of our growth strategy, and we are delighted to broaden our footprint in the country by building teams (of) extraordinary talents in and around Cebu,” EY-GDS global operations leader Mukul Pachisia said in a statement.
The live feed was suspended mid-broadcast due to the fact that the Lotto Plus 1 draw machine began selecting balls earlier than the sequence should have started.
The operator said that the recording of the draw continued but the live TV broadcast was halted as a result. In a statement, the National Lottery that the issue did not affect the integrity of the draw.
“The National Lottery would like to inform its players that there was a minor technical issue with tonight’s Lotto draw. However, there is no issue with either the integrity of the draw or the numbers drawn,” the statement reads.
As is standard procedure, when a technical event occurs, the recording of the draw continues but the live tv broadcast is halted.
“This is in order to protect the integrity of the draw and is in line with our approved game rules and processes, all of which are and were independently observed by KPMG.”
PwC Australia’s Kristin Stubbins, who has had to say “I’m sorry” nonstop since she became acting CEO in May, is leaving the firm. No one can blame her.
Ms Stubbins held the acting CEO position for three months, and in that time she had to repeatedly apologise for the scandal, move on a number of partners, commission reports into what went wrong and organise the fire sale of the firm’s public sector consulting arm.
In June, it was announced that she would be replaced by UK partner Kevin Burrowes, who was parachuted into the CEO role after PwC global took effective control of the local firm in response to the scandal.
Ms Stubbins will leave at the end of January. She is the firm’s most senior auditor, a former managing partner of its all-important assurance division and the signing partner of the flagship Macquarie Bank audit.
Marco Perez, who used to be accounting manager at a storage and modular space company and read other people’s emails as a fun hobby, is pleading guilty to SEC charges of insider trading. Current article from Pasadena Now, September 27 SEC complaint.
He also performed assignments for the company’s chairman, including printing out the chairman’s emails.
As a result, Perez had access to material information belonging to General Finance, including offers to buy the company, before the information was released to the investing public, the DOJ said.
In violation of his fiduciary duties to General Finance and its shareholders, and in violation of company policy against insider trading, in March and April of 2021, Perez purchased a total of 66,585 shares of General Finance stock that he was later able to sell for a total of $1.26 million, according to prosecutors.
Perez purchased the General Finance stock after reading confidential emails sent to the company’s chairman in early 2021 that concerned the pending sale of General Finance for a price in the range of $19 to $20 per share. Perez paid prices between $10 and $12 for the 66,585 shares he bought, the DOJ stated.
Gibson Dunn covers the following topics in their Q3 update for accounting firms. Swing on over to peruse the PDF if any of them are of interest.
PCAOB Staff Report Finds 40 Percent of Audits Have Part I.A Deficiencies
SEC Chief Accountant Issues Statements on Crypto Assurance Work and Risk Assessment
Second Circuit Decertifies Investor Class in Long-Running Dispute
UK Supreme Court Strikes Down Litigation Funding
NYSE and Nasdaq Listing Standards on Clawbacks Take Effect
New York DFS Proposes Second Amendment to Cybersecurity Regulation
California Broadens Restrictions on Employee Non-Competes
California Passes Legislation Establishing Climate-Related Reporting Requirements
Alright that’s enough of that. Be well and give me a shout if you see anything interesting (“interesting” is open to interpretation given our niche, feel free to take generous liberties with the definition).
Companies May Face Rule to Shift Audit Firms [NYT]
Publicly traded companies may be forced to change their audit firms after several years, the chief regulator of the industry said Thursday. James R. Doty, who became chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board this year, said in a speech that he had been disturbed by evidence turned up by board inspectors that many auditors failed to show sufficient independence from their clients. “Considering the disturbing lack of skepticism we continue to see,” he told a conference at the University of Southern California, “the board is prepared to consider all possible methods of addressing the problem of audit qua hether mandatory audit firm rotation would help address the inherent conflict created because the auditor is paid by the client.”
Deloitte attacked for appointing former RBS auditor as chairman [Telegraph]
A group of institutional investors has launched an extraordinary attack on Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu for appointing the former auditor of the Royal Bank of Scotland as its new global chairman. The investors are angry that Steve Almond, who was responsible for vetting the accounts of RBS between 2005 and 2009, has been promoted to the head of one of the “Big Four” audit firms.
Virgin America hiring new CFO from Pinnacle Air [AP]
Peter D. Hunt will become CFO and senior vice president effective July 11, replacing Holly Nelson, who is leaving “to pursue other opportunities,” Virgin America said. Hunt has spent six years at Pinnacle, which operates regional flights for Delta, Continental and US Airways through subsidiaries that include Colgan Air and Mesaba Aviation.
IRS Loosens Aug. 31 Deadline for Offshore Tax Disclosures [Bloomberg]
The Internal Revenue Service will let taxpayers with undeclared offshore accounts apply for a 90-day extension of the Aug. 31 deadline for coming forward. The change, announced on the IRS website today, would let taxpayers seek the extension in writing by showing that they have made a “good-faith attempt” to meet the deadline and explain what information they are missing. “This would be a welcome relief to many taxpayers,” said Barbara Kaplan, an attorney at Greenberg Traurig LLP in New York. “There is difficulty in getting the records together.”
Groupon’s Non-GAAP Measures Raise Questions [CFO Journal]
Beware non-GAAP accounting measures. In the case of Groupon’s IPO filing, at least, they seem to raise more questions than they answer about the company’s earnings prospects.
SEC Probes China Auditors [WSJ]
The SEC has publicly indicated it was examining accounting and disclosure issues regarding Chinese companies that engaged in “reverse mergers,” which allow companies to list on U.S. exchanges without as much regulatory scrutiny as an initial public offering. People familiar with the matter say the investigation also includes auditors, which hadn’t previously been known. As part of its inquiry, the SEC has suspended trading on some Chinese companies, questioning their truthfulness about their finances and operations.
Key Dem: Tax reform should not hurt working families [The Hill]
Rep. Sandy Levin, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee is set to say Friday that, while there is a need for tax reform, an overhaul of the code should not punish working families. Officials on both sides of the aisle have called tax reform a priority, and Republicans are pushing a plan to reduce both the top corporate and individual rates to 25 percent, down from their current 35 percent.
