That’s how many consultants Deloitte UK has deployed to work on a coronavirus contact tracing project for the UK government.
Some other notable numbers:
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has engaged the services of other consultants from McKinsey, BCG, PWC, KPMG and EY as well however the number of consultants from all firms other than Deloitte combined is 144
Deloitte charges up to £2,360 (about $3,053 USD) per day per consultant
The Test and Trace program could end up costing the government £300m ($3.88m USD$388m USD)
16,000 — that’s the number of COVID-19 test results temporarily lost from the Public Health England national database recently due to an Excel error
Read more: Coronavirus: More than 1,000 consultants from Deloitte on Test and Trace programme [Sky News]
~ Update includes clarification of partner’s employment status and statements from accused’s attorneys via MarketWatch.
~ Update at circa 7:20 pm ET includes statement from Deloitte
If you thought all this insider trading fun was just for hedge funds you would be sorely mistaken. Deloitte seems to have another case of a partner who can’t seem to control himself when he gets some insider info. Earlier this year, former Deloitte Vice Chairman Tom Fla > shelled out $1.1 million to settle charges with the SEC.
This time around, it’s still a family affair – husband, wife, wife’s sister and brother-in-law job – and it went overseas:
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a former Deloitte Tax LLP partner and his wife with repeatedly leaking confidential merger and acquisition information to family members overseas in a multi-million dollar insider trading scheme.
The SEC alleges that Arnold McClellan and his wife Annabel, who live in San Francisco, provided advance notice of at least seven confidential acquisitions planned by Deloitte’s clients to Annabel’s sister and brother-in-law in London. After receiving the illegal tips, the brother-in-law took financial positions in U.S. companies that were targets of acquisitions by Arnold McClellan’s clients. His subsequent trades were closely timed with telephone calls between Annabel McClellan and her sister, and with in-person visits with the McClellans. Their insider trading reaped illegal profits of approximately $3 million in U.S. dollars, half of which was to be funneled back to Annabel McClellan.
The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) has announced charges against the two relatives — James and Miranda Sanders of London. The FSA also charged colleagues of James Sanders whom he tipped with the nonpublic information in the course of his work at his London-based derivatives firm. Sanders’s tippees and clients made approximately $20 million in U.S. dollars by trading on the inside information.
So not a bad haul. The kicker is, Annabel was also employed at Deloitte, working in the London, San Jose and San Francisco offices. The McClellans provided information to the Sanders on several companies including Kronos, Inc., aQuantive, Inc. and Getty Images.
The SEC brass gave their standard scolding. First, Enforcement Chief, Robert Khuzami, “The McClellans might have thought that they could conceal their illegal scheme by having close relatives make illegal trades offshore. They were wrong.”
And San Fran Director Marc Fagel, “Deloitte and its clients entrusted Arnold McClellan with highly confidential information. Along with his wife, he abused that trust and used high-placed access to corporate secrets for the couple’s own benefit and their family’s enrichment.”
But the real story here is the second instance of insider trading charges against a Deloitte partner this year. The firm successfully sued Tom Flanagan back in January but you have to wonder if there isn’t some flaw with the firm’s internal oversight. Not long after the Flanagan suit, we reported on the 475 reprimands for internal noncompliance in 2009. Those reprimands did not mention insider trading specifically but over 200 of them were related to independence violations. Pattern? You can weigh in below.
Anyone with any knowledge on this story is invited to get in touch with us. as it is not clear if there has been any internal repercussions yet. Messages (including voicemail, carrier pigeon and morse code) left with Deloitte have not been returned (see statement below).
Lawyers for Arnold McClellan denied charges Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission that the former Deloitte Tax LLP partner was involved in a big insider trading scheme. “Arnold McClellan denies the SEC’s claims and will vigorously contest them,” Elliot Peters and Christopher Kearney of Keker & Van Nest LLP said in a statement on behalf of McClellan. “He did not trade on insider information, and there will be no evidence that he passed along any confidential information to anyone.” McClellan “had no financial incentive to commit the actions alleged,” the lawyers added. “He is a conscientious, law-abiding professional with a 23-year unblemished track record of client service at Deloitte to prove it. We will see the SEC in court.”
And just to clarify, McClellan is no longer with Deloitte, leaving the firm in June of this year. Deloitte spokesman Jonathan Gandal emailed us the firm statement (see below) still hasn’t returned our call (busy day, right?) but managed to give a statement toand was quoted by Reuters, saying that he was “shocked and saddened” by the allegations and “If the allegations prove to be true, they would represent serious violations of our strict and regularly communicated confidentiality policies.”
UPDATE 2: Here is the full statement from Deloitte:
“We are shocked and saddened by these allegations against our former tax partner and members of his family. If the allegations prove to be true, they would represent serious violations of our strict and regularly communicated confidentiality policies. Deloitte is committed to safeguarding non-public client information and has cooperated with the SEC throughout its investigation. The SEC does not allege any wrongdoing by Deloitte in this unfortunate matter.”
Last we checked on Deloitte’s compensation news, it was news of the wealth being spread around more than last year, although no one was really impressed based on the discussion that followed.
“It was announced at a Tax meeting last Monday that the average raise for NE Tax would be 5% this year.”
Since Dr. Phil recently said that raises weren’t going to return to “pre-recession levels” an average raise of 5% may be in the ballpark. Then again, this is only the tax practice…
Anyhoo, our source told us that reactions boiled down to:
1. After axing or transferring everybody from the Stamford, Wilton and Hartford offices, they better pay the remaining people more!
2. At least it’s more than the average of 0% last year…
If you don’t fall into either camp 1 or 2, make your opinion known. Otherwise, get back to watching your fantasy team suck.
Yesterday we shared with you some motivational words of wisdom from Deloitte. Today the firm is stepping it up a notch, not just offering words, but a PowerPoint presentation informing the troops about Winter 2010 C.P.R. (Cash, Prizes, & Rewards). The long/short is that Green-Dotters will be eligible to win gift cards starting tomorrow, once in February, once in March, and a grand prize on March 31st.
While we’re impressed with this particular method of distraction/motivation, the best part is that there is a key slide that includes an admission that they know, that you know, that your life is temporarily over:
Whether your slim chances of winning one of these gift cards is worth A) your skin not seeing a ray of sun for three months B) not having any semblance of a social life or C) your significant other screaming “That’s it! It’s so over! You can sleep at the f—ing office if you like being there so much!” has to be determined by you and you alone. CPR 2010.ppsx
4 thoughts on “Number of the Day: 1,114”
And you can’t do math either. 300M GBP = 388M USD
Never claimed I could. Thanks for the correction, prick.
Lets keep it professional and not let it get personal. Thank you for the reporting here.
Submitting a comment just to insert a and stop the madness
Comments are closed.
Before you go!
Are you Looking for a fresh accounting career opportunity?
Going Concern now has thousands of open accounting jobs.
And you can’t do math either. 300M GBP = 388M USD
Never claimed I could. Thanks for the correction, prick.
Lets keep it professional and not let it get personal. Thank you for the reporting here.
Submitting a comment just to insert a and stop the madness