You better watch your back, DLA Piper. PwC is coming for ya.
From Law.com:
PwC’s legal operations brought in around £70 million ($91.82 million) in U.K. revenues during the 2017-18 financial year—a figure that would have put it only just outside the U.K. top 50 based on last year’s rankings.
The Big Four accounting firm, which received an alternative business structure (ABS) license in 2014 that enables it to integrate its legal arm into the wider business, now has about 350 fee earners in the U.K. offering advice in areas including cybersecurity and data protection, corporate reorganizations, disputes, employment, immigration, M&A, pensions and technology.
Deloitte was the last of the Big 4 firms in the U.K. to barge in on Big Law’s turf earlier this year. All four firms now have ABS licenses enabling them to practice legal services in the U.K. KPMG and EY also got their ABS licenses in 2014.
The Accounting News Roundup newsletter is back! Every Friday you’ll get a recap of recent content posted on Going Concern, On This Date in Going Concern History, list of hot remote and hybrid accounting jobs, and more. Sign up here today.
[Law.com]
Image: Shutterstock/Philip Lange
The CFTC’s action against PwC probably came as a result of a shocking CME Group announcement late Wednesday: “It now appears that the firm [MF Global] made … transfers of customer segregated funds in a manner that may have been designed to avoid detection.” These transfers, CME Group said, appeared to have taken place after its audit team showed up last week at MF Global to take a look and found everything to be in order. CME Group couldn’t have been hoodwinked like that if PwC had been doing its job all along. You can’t circumvent controls unless there are none or there are holes. It was PwC’s job to review controls and the adequacy of policies and procedures to support them. [
So now you can get shitty legal advice as well as shitty audits. That’s great!