So You Say You Want To Be Melissa Francis’s Pool Boy? [DealBreaker]
Stanford Stays in Jail as Judge Revokes Bail [DealBook/NYT]
Bank of America accused of anti-consumer practices – If by, “anti-consumer practices”, you mean Ken Lewis hoarding the Maker’s Mark, then he pleads no contest. [Reuters]
Breaking News
- Friday Footnotes: KPMG Staff Not Happy With How Layoffs Were Handled; SEC Says PCAOB Should Toss Independence Rules | 5.8.26
- In a Final Rule, Dept of Education Is Unswayed By the AICPA’s Strongly Worded Letters About the Meaning of Words
- Plante Moran Goes South of the Border to Acquire a Firm in Mexico
Layoff Watch ’26: KPMG Cuts 4% From Consulting
We've got another RIF at KPMG, a consulting cull that went down yesterday (that's Wednesday the 29th for those of you reading this a week from now). Let's start with…
The Department of War Broke Up with KPMG, KPMG Gives Up Federal Audits Altogether
The other day -- and by the other day we mean like more than a week ago -- we received a text on the tipline that read "KPMG US to…
KPMG Shoves 10% of Its Audit Partners Out the Door
We're sure you've seen this FT headline floating around today: KPMG to axe 10% of US audit partners. And if you, like most denizens of the internet these days, read…
PwC Tells Remote Tax Staff to Get Their Butts Into the Office
So much for PwC letting all their people work remotely forever. Remember when that got headlines five years ago? See: PwC Just Announced That You Never Have To Go Back…
KPMG Plans to Hand Routine Testing Off to AI
Did you happen to see this WSJ article from the other day? In "In This Critical Part of Audits, the Accountant’s Role Is Shrinking Fast," we're given a look into…
Friday Footnotes: KPMG Staff Not Happy With How Layoffs Were Handled; SEC Says PCAOB Should Toss Independence Rules | 5.8.26
Footnotes is a collection of stories from around the accounting profession curated by actual humans and published every Friday at 5pm Eastern. While you're here, subscribe to our newsletter to…
In a Final Rule, Dept of Education Is Unswayed By the AICPA’s Strongly Worded Letters About the Meaning of Words
In the final ruling of a game of semantics that really chapped the AICPA's ass, accounting has not earned a place on the Department of Education list of "professional" degrees.…
Plante Moran Goes South of the Border to Acquire a Firm in Mexico
Shoutout to the person who sent us a link to this, might have slipped past the ol' radar otherwise: Plante Moran bought itself a 500-person Mexican firm called JA Del…
Layoff Watch ’26: RSM Trims Down in Audit
Seeing a couple Reddit posts about a wave of "Business Update" meetings being forced on people's calendars at RSM yesterday. As we all know, "business update" is code for "you're…
SEC Says “What If We Just… Didn’t” on Quarterly Reporting
So that thing that started with a Trump shower thought last fall and that WSJ said would be happening imminently is, in fact, now happening. Catch yourself up on earlier…
KPMG Plans to Hand Routine Testing Off to AI
Did you happen to see this WSJ article from the other day? In "In This Critical Part of Audits, the Accountant’s Role Is Shrinking Fast," we're given a look into…
AI Will Be EY Auditors’ New BFF, According to EY
While staff in tax at EY US will soon be spending more time with their flesh-based colleagues due to a return-to-office mandate that requires them in the office for an…
ICYMI: According to This AI CEO You Won’t Have to Go to Work in a Year
Commence to fantasizing about what you'll do with all that glorious free time when you lose your job to AI in 12-18 months because that's the confident prediction made by…
Another Early AI Accounting Startup Just Bit the Dust
TIL that early AI accounting platform Botkeeper has died. I found out via this CFO Brew article which pointed to a post on Botkeeper's own site. Turns out r/accounting was…
KPMG Brings Cheating Into the AI Age By Using AI to Cheat on AI Exams
The image is upside down because Australia. This story sounds like a joke but we assure you it is not. KPMG Australia has expanded KPMG's storied cheating repertoire by being…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | October 16, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting or Tax Talent? We’ve Got You Covered.If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | October 2, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting or Tax Talent? We’ve Got You Covered.If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | September 25, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting or Tax Talent? We’ve Got You Covered.If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | September 18, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting or Tax Talent? We’ve Got You Covered.If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | September 4, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting Talent? We’ve Got You Covered. If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're not…
Twitter Feed
In a Final Rule, Dept of Education Is Unswayed By the AICPA’s Strongly Worded Letters About the Meaning of Words
The end of the ‘Always Available’ professional
Here Are Tax and Audit Salaries at Top 25, Top 300, and Regional Firms
Recruiting firm Brewer Morris has released its 2025 US CPA salary guide and should you want to read the whole thing you can request it from them here. Perhaps you,…
Friendly Reminder Not to Work Yourself to Death For This Profession
Saw this on the bird app yesterday and thought its message would be worth passing along what with 20 days remaining until April 15 and nerves as strained as ever…
Accounting Firm Abruptly Nopes Out of Tax Season Early (UPDATE)
Ed. note: An earlier version of this article's headline stated the sheriff is investigating. The Alexander County Sheriff's Office informed us they are not investigating, only fielding calls from the…
This Deloitte Office Has Eliminated Trash Cans at Desks to Make Staff Get Up Off Their Asses
Boston Business Journal wrote an article about Deloitte's new office in Boston and for some reason they chose to lead with this: You won’t find trash cans at the desks…
The IRS Decided to Troll Tax Pros For 10/15
We realize the decision to run maintenance on IRS systems likely isn't made by anyone who understands deadlines but surely someone who does could inform the IT department of these…
Top Remote Accounting Freelancers: February 3, 2024
Looking to staff up for a season or hire a freelancer for a project? Accountingfly is ready to partner with you! Gain full access to a pool of highly skilled…
10 Essential Project Management Principles for Accounting Firms
Every accounting firm struggles with project management, with smaller practices that are rapidly expanding taking the brunt of the damage. As your firm adds new clients, takes on more work,…
6 Ways Email is Secretly Destroying Your Accounting Firm
Email: The word itself sounds innocent, doesn't it? Kind of like "snail mail," but faster, sleeker, and without the slimy trail. But don't be fooled—email is secretly a sinister beast,…
Don’t Grow Your Accounting Firm Out of Business! Break Up With These Unscalable Practices Now
Business growth is always a high priority for accounting firms, especially small-to-midsize practices. Take care, though, because growth can be a double-edged sword. If your firm expands too quickly or…
BDO, Looking to Spread Out Some Liability, Admits New Partners
As you probably know, BDO Seidman is having a rough year. Tax shelter prosecutions and trials for the International Global Coordination firm that now falls on the U.S. make for some big liability exposure.
The obvious solution to this conundrum? Spreading the love!
BDO Seidman, LLP, is pleased to announce that 10 new partners have been admitted to the partnership, effective July 1, 2009. Five of the new partners are in the tax practice, four are in the assurance business line and one is in BDO Consulting. BDO Seidman, LLP is a leading national professional services firm providing assurance, tax, financial advisory and consulting services to private and publicly traded businesses.”I am very proud to welcome each of these very deserving individuals to our partnership,” said Jack Weisbaum, CEO of BDO Seidman. “The key to maintaining momentum in our profession is a commitment to recruiting, training and retaining superior client service professionals. Each of these new partners is an example of our commitment to human capital development.”
What are the chances that these new partners are some of the most hated people in the firm? C’mon, $520 million judgment hanging out there, the bigwigs have to be thinking, “well, as long as we’re screwed, we may as well stick it to some people within the firm we don’t like.”
Congrats to the new partners!
BDO Seidman, LLP, Admits 10 New Partners [BDO Seidman Press Release]
SEC Rule Would Crack Down on Celebrity Board Members
Now that the SEC has got this Ponzi thing under control, it can focus on more important matters like getting famous people off companies’ board of directors because, you know, they don’t really know shit about the companies they serve.
Perfect example: Tommy Franks, former commander of forces in Iraq, who resigned his seat on Bank of America’s board last week, was on the audit committee. The AUDIT COMMITTEE.
That’s actually not even the best example. According to Bloomberg, everyone’s favorite acquitted killer, O.J. Simpson was on the audit committee of Infinity Broadcasting Corporation before he was charged with murder in 1994. O.J. Simpson. Audit committee. Yes.
We could go on to tell you about Lance Armstrong missing 11 board meetings but still getting paid over $70,000 by Morgans Hotel Group or Gerald Ford sitting on the Board of Traveler’s Insurance (owned by Citi) until he was 85 years old but you get the picture.
This is your SEC, citizens of America, getting their shit together since 1934.
Armstrong, ‘Celebrity’ Directors Targeted in SEC Rule [Bloomberg]
Philip Morris: Hey, We Do Good You Know
The benevolence of a cigarette company is quite a touching thing. Footnoted.org has a post […]
Uncategorized
PwC Needs a Lesson or Two in Spin
In “let’s talk about anything but Satyam” PwC news, the largest Big 4 firm was […]
Score One for U.S. GAAP
U.S. GAAP just got a little boost in its image versus its sexy rival, IFRS, courtesy of Audit Integrity, a research services firm.
Audit Integrity studied filings by European companies from 2001 to 2008, looking at filings both pre and post IFRS adoption. The objectives were, “to determine whether IFRS has been implemented consistently across Europe, whether it has resulted in a common method of reporting financial data, and how the depth and comparability of data under IFRS compares to U.S. GAAP.”
At first glance, one might think that with all the bashing of U.S. GAAP in recent years that this was IFRS chance to prove once and for all that it was the new cock of the walk.
Well, not so fast GAAP haters:
“Based on our analysis, we are not seeing a significant improvement in financial reporting when companies shift to IFRS,” said Jack Zwingli, CEO of Audit Integrity. “We found that IFRS is a common standard, but there are significant variances in IFRS reporting, in the completeness of information, the timeliness and the filing frequency.”
Sounds like IFRS ain’t all that does it? You want more?
The firm says overall there are indications that financial reporting is more consistent and more comparable under IFRS than before IFRS adoption in Europe, but it’s not clear that IFRS represents an improvement over U.S. GAAP. In fact, the firm’s report says GAAP filers may have an edge over IFRS filing in terms of the timeliness, depth and breadth of financial data provided to investors.
Ouch, IASB. You want the best part? The Europeans disclose less on executive compensation than we do here in America. You’re all familiar with how popular corporate executives are. To wit:
[Jack] Zwingli [Audit Integrity CEO] said he was also surprised that the analysis revealed IFRS generally provides less information about executive compensation. “It’s not good in the United States, but it’s better than it is in Europe,” he said. “There is more consistency in reporting and deeper coverage of data under GAAP than under IFRS.”
Seems like IFRS has got work to do…IASB, you can call us when you want to get serious.
Study Pokes Holes in IFRS Reporting Quality, Consistency [Accounting & Auditing Update/Compliance Week]
Scoping | 06.30.09
Waiting for Madoff, Angry Crowd Is Disappointed – Apparently, everyone was hoping for a lynching in Union Square. 150 years is so unsatisfying. [New York Times]
Madoff Faces Harsher Imprisonment Than Corporate Predecessors [Bloomberg]
Deficit forces California to issue IOUs – Still as good as cash, right? [FT.com]
UBS Selling Park Ave. Stake [New York Post]
Review Comments – 6.29.09 – Bernie Madoff Sentenced to 150 Years in Prison Edition
In honor of the vengeance justice handed down today by Judge Denny Chin, we found some of the better posts out there re: Master do Ponz getting smacked by the book:
Questions linger over $65bn fraud [FT.com]
Guesstimate Bernie Madoff’s Sentence [DealBreaker]
Madoff’s Little Helpers [Clusterstock]
The Real Victims of Bernie Madoff [Daily Intel]
Facebook Finds a CFO, Hopefully One that is Okay with Awkward Interaction
Facebook Inc. announced today that David Ebersman will be the company’s Chief Financial Officer:
Ebersman, 39, will oversee Facebook’s finance, accounting, investor relations and real estate functions. He will formally start in September, Palo Alto, California-based Facebook said in a statement today.
You’ll note that Ebersman will oversee “investor relations”. It’s probably no coincidence that this is not a task that falls on Mark Zuckerberg who “has been known to have awkward interactions with other humans”:http://valleywag.gawker.com/344440/60-minutes-scoop-zuckerberg-remains-awkward-with-humans.
Thus, another challenge that will face Ebersman in his new position will be actually interacting with his boss. We here at Going Concern predict that awkward encounters with Zuckerberg will definitely be the biggest unforeseen challenge that Ebersman will wrestle with.
The article does not elaborate on whether Ebersman’s status updates on the social networking site are trite observations about the weather, his busy weekend, or a bad day at work.
“
Facebook Names Former Genentech Manager Ebersman Finance Chief”:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a1vS1Ub87oSA [Bloomberg]
Stanford CFO Flipping?
Chief Financial Officer Bean Counter Number-Maker-Upper Officer at Stanford Financial, James Davis, is appearing in court Wednesday to answer fraud and conspiracy charges.
Davis has spent the last few months cooperating with prosecutors and may flip on Stan the Man regarding the small matter of some money gone missing.
No agreement has been reached yet for Davis but considering the number of years being handed out and Stan’s potential fate of multiple centuries in prison, he may at the very least, consider cooperating.
Stanford CFO to appear in court [Accountancy Age]
Deloitte May Be the #1 Firm of No Fun
Regardless of who a client is or what their business is, accounting firms don’t like to lose them. Lost revenue, a little bit of a slap in the face, a promise that wasn’t delivered (which, let’s be honest, really isn’t all that rare).
For whatever reason, we find the story that Heelys, the skate shoe company, having fired Deloitte as their auditor, has to be an especially tough pill to swallow for the Big D.
Why, you may ask? How about the fact that Heelys MAKES SHOES THAT HAVE WHEELS ON THEM which might be something fun.
According to Reuters, Heelys gave Deloitte-period the heave-ho primarily because of cost considerations. That may be true but something tells us that the real reason might have been Deloitte putting the kibosh on Heelys request of the audit team to wear the skate shoes while working at the client’s HQ.
Deloitte, like all Big 4 firms, being the fun killer, likely argued that skate shoes did fall under acceptable attire in its dress code.
It was probably only a matter of time until the Heelys audit committee concluded that they had to find another audit firm with smaller sticks up their asses. Partners on the engagement are now quietly stewing with their decision that may have put their firm solidly in the #1 slot for hating all things fun.
Heelys dismisses accounting firm [Reuters]
Scoping | 06.29.09
State Street may face SEC charges over mortgages – “The Boston-based company said on Monday that Securities and Exchange Commission staff issued a ‘Wells’ notice to its banking unit on June 25 related to disclosures and management by State Street Global Advisors of “active” fixed-income strategies in 2007 and in prior periods.” [Reuters]
UBS Said to Seek U.S. Tax Deal in Weeks – “With a payment of 3 billion to 5 billion Swiss francs, UBS hopes in the next two weeks to settle a lawsuit over the tens of thousands of American clients suspected of tax evasion, the Swiss newspaper Sonntag reported. Analysts on Monday, however, questioned the figure.” [DealBook/NYT]
A Unified Bank Regulator Is a Good Start – Penned by rock star CEO, Jamie Dimon [WSJ]