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Rumor Mill: KPMG L.A. Layoffs, Maybe Dallas?

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

We’ve received multiple reports of layoffs that occurred last week in the audit practice of the Los Angeles office.
The numbers have been described as “a few” and the news has been “hush hush” making us wonder if these cuts were some unfinished business from either the August and September rounds.
There also have been rumors about additional layoffs in Dallas tax but we don’t have any more details than that.
If you’ve got any details for these layoffs or details for other cities, get in touch and discuss in the comments.

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In Case You Were Wondering, KPMG Is Still Wells Fargo’s Auditor

As we’ve discussed, the sudden departure of Wells Fargo’s now-former CFO, Howard Atkins, has been a bit of a mystery. The bank stated that Howie quit for “personal reasons” but Chris Whalen, for one, wasn’t buying that story and stated that it was an “internal dispute” at the Stagecoach Shop and “public behavior suggests significant problems in the bank’s internal systems and controls as defined by the Sarbanes-Oxley law.”

Then John Carney got all heresay yesterday, reporting:

Others say that the departure stems from a heated argument between Atkins and the CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf. Still others say that there could be even more personal reasons for Atkins leaving.

This is pretty fun because this “heated argument” could have been over something awesome like Atkins’s using Stumpf’s private commode without permission or a spurious challenge in their weekly Scrabble® match. Whatever the reasons for Atkins’s departure, all this speculation got the gang over at The Street wondering that maybe – just maybe – KPMG’s risk management team had soiled themselves over the whole situation and asked the audit team to start drawing up their resignation papers.

KPMG said Friday that it remains Wells Fargo’s […] external auditor, though the firm wouldn’t comment on recent criticism that Wells’ financial disclosures aren’t up to snuff. KPMG spokesman George Ledwith confirmed that the Big Four accounting firm is still working with Wells Fargo, which plans to file its 10-K annual report by the end of the month. Howard Atkins, who had been CFO of Wells Fargo for nearly a decade, resigned unexpectedly last week and won’t be signing off on that report. His replacement, Tim Sloan, will do so instead. “Yes, KPMG LLP is the external auditor for Wells Fargo & Company,” said Ledwith.

So what prompted this brief line of questioning is, in itself, a mystery. KPMG resigning as the auditor of Wells Fargo is about as likely as John Veihmeyer throwing all his copies of Rudy into an incinerator. But then again, maybe The Street knows something we don’t. Was/is/will there be any doubt that KPMG will remain the auditor of Wells Fargo? Rampant speculation and nightmare scenarios are welcome. And if you’re in the know, email us.

Auditor Stands By Wells Fargo [TS]

John Veihmeyer and Tim Flynn Would Love To Tell You How KPMG Is Doing

This time of year, the leadership at your firms are on a communication offensive because you all just went through hell. They want to whisper sweet words in your ears so that you keep the faith in them and your firm.

Today we bring you a little taste of some of those sweet words courtesy of the C-suite at KPMG.

Newlynveld, John Veihmeyer was joined by Tim Flynn, COO Henry Keizer, along with some inquisitors for a grueling Q&A that should re-energize you for summer.

Conversations with Leadership
How Are We Doing?

Flynn: First one up gets the mike.

[Prepackaged Inquisitor #1]: Are we on track? How is it going? What challenges have we faced?

Flynn: I think the foundation for recovery is being laid. And I think it started, obviously, in Asia. It’s moving its way through the U.S. Things are better than people had predicted three or four months ago. And we saw retail sales today came out with improvement – consumer confidence being up. So all of those things are signs that we’re on a path for recovery. And now the question is, how does that translate into our business?

Veihmeyer: We’ve built a plan that was consistent with our expectation of what that marketplace was going to be. First half of the year continuing to be a very challenging marketplace, with a gradual increase in marketplace activity as we got into the second six months of our fiscal year. So what have we seen to date? Our results have tracked what we expected. We are actually slightly ahead of plan, six months through our fiscal year, which is the great news.

And I think everyone should feel really good about that, particularly as you look at what we’re seeing in some of the businesses – Advisory, which was clearly hard hit by the lack of spending and the curtailing of a lot of initiatives on the part of our clients, have had very strong months the last several months. And that corner seems to have absolutely turned.

And we are just beginning to see, I think, the things that really impact Audit and Tax around some of the transactional activity that really drives those incremental services that make a big difference in Audit and Tax – that’s starting to come. We expect that to translate into greater revenue over the second six months.

Quite the trifecta of vague brainteasers PI #1 had. But without being very specific, and using a couple of banal metaphors, JV and T Fly are confident that everything is cool, thanks to China and India. Europe isn’t worth mentioning, that’ll blow over. Advisory was on its deathbed but things are bouncing back. Audit and Tax are far less sexy but they’re cash cows. They might see a little more action if Advisory started showing more skin.

[Prepackaged Inquisitor #2]: My name’s [Prepackaged Inquisitor #2]. I just wanted to ask about the new role of the office managing partners, focusing on just going to market.

Keizer: By focusing the office managing partners really on two areas: one, growth of our business, and also our people. So the office managing partners teamed with the functional leaders, and the professionals within geographies, and looked outside into the marketplace, and which companies fit that criteria—impactful to our brand, our people, great growth, and profitability opportunity.

From that exercise, across the country, over 1,600 companies were identified. A process was then undertaken to actually assign specific resources. As we sit today, and we take that population of companies and say, how are we doing? The revenue growth that has been realized in our first six months, in that population, has exceeded our normal portfolio of clients. So it’s showing, again, at an early stage, focus, and a prioritization of where we want to strategically go, does translate into opportunity and revenue.

Flynn: If there’s one message that comes out of this, just one message to everybody here listening – is that the one thing we know for certain—we are not short of opportunities.

We have tremendous opportunities what’s happening around the world. The key is, how do we align our resources, look at our investments, develop our people’s skills to capitalize on those opportunities? So from a standpoint of the future – there’s tremendous opportunity for all of you, and for our businesses, as we go forward.

Your local bigwigs are out there digging up biz because things have gotten a little more competitive than we would like. We can’t simply rely on a sexy Masters Champion in every RFP so they’re getting their hands dirty for a change. Plus, from where we stand, there’s plenty of business out there so if they don’t get the job done, we’ll probably go to the bullpen.