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Deloitte’s New Motor City Digs Are ‘Cutting Edge’

How this didn’t get into the Super Bowl Commercial, I’ll never know.

Deloitte is moving from 160,000 square feet on nine floors of the 600 Tower into 100,000 to 110,000 square feet on six floors in the 200 Tower. The Detroit office employs about 1,000 people. Managing Partner Joseph Angileri said no downsizing of staff is involved.

“We’ve actually been hiring,” he said. “We’ve been in our current space since 1991, and the space is old and traditional and not conducive to the way we do work now. When half of your workforce only spends 20 percent of their time in the office, you don’t need to build the way you used to.

“It’s going to be an eye-opening environment. It will be really next generation, cutting edge.”

Build-out begins for Deloitte’s new space [Crain’s]

Ernst & Young Paid $400 Million to Settle Akai

That’s according to reports from Asia Sentinel. The liquidator of the now bankrupt Akai also, “extracted US$100 million from a local tycoon, Ho Wing-0n, who had allegedly conspired with the then chairman of Akai, James Ting, to strip the company of its assets. Ho himself was a former partner at Ernst & Young until 1990 and has been responsible for the Akai audit.”

Sounds like a nice little back-slapping/glad-handing/ass-grabbing arrangement and depending on how things progress, sounds like another one may be in place:

The size of the settlement against Ernst & Young reflects not only the size of losses sustained by Akai creditors but the years of organised sleaze attributable to Ernst and Young’s Hong Kong operation. If the civil settlements are not followed up by vigorous criminal prosecutions by the Hong Kong authorities, one can conclude that mutual back-scratching and old-boy principles override issues of corporate governance and the responsibilities of auditors.

As you may have noticed, we’re big fans of speculation so, for now, we’ll go along with whole HK Fuzz and auditors back-scratching scenario presented here if no criminal charges arise. E&Y has continually reiterated their willingness to cooperate in the investigation so you can make up your minds on what that all really means.

The liquidator, Borelli Walsh seems to be the catalyst of this case as the Sentinel speculates that if, “it been one of the other of the Big Four auditing firms it is likely that some clubby backroom deal would have been done which would have kept criminal activities well hidden and involved a settlement a fraction of that obtained by Borrelli Walsh.”

‘Clubby backroom deal’? You mean those are real? We’d be curious to know if E&Y in the States has even brought this up internally to address the press coverage. If those of you in the Ernstiverse are getting love letters from JT on this, kindly pass them along or discuss in the comments.

No Accounting for Accountants [Asia Sentinel]

Earlier: Raid at E&Y Hong Kong Was Probably Really Boring
Earlier: EY Doesn’t Want to Be Outdone By Anyone So They Went to Hong Kong for a Scandal