Tuesday, October 30, 2007

PCAOB CFO - Ernst and Young Alum - Resigns


The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board reported that its CFO Tom Hohman resigned to become a CFO of a private company in Maryland. He had joined PCAOB in July 2003, and was its first CFO and one of the founding officers. He began his career as an auditor with Ernst & Young LLP and is a Certified Public Accountant...




PricewaterhouseCoopers - IT Security Getting Stronger


A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey finds that companies are investing in IT security infrastructure but lagging on their monitoring and enforcement. The 5th annual Global State of Information Security Survey 2007, the largest multi-industry 120+-country survey of its kind, contains responses of 7,200 IT, security and business executives...


Sunday, October 28, 2007

BearingPoint Q2-2007 Results: Loss Widens, Gross Profits Drop


BearingPoint recently reported its Q2-2007 results for its second quarter of 2007 ending June 30, 2007....BE is catching up on contemporaneous SEC reporting, so this is for results achieved almost four months ago


Revenue for Q2-2007 were $875 million dropping from Q2-2006 levels of $893 million, and gross profit was $142 million, declining a whopping $49 million from $191 million prior. As a result net income (loss actually) widened to $(64) million from $(2) million in prior quarter...








Friday, October 26, 2007

PricewaterhouseCoopers - Still Top of the Pyramid

PricewaterhouseCoopers remains top dog among the Big Four firms.



With 2007 revenues of $25.1 Billion, PwC roars up with 14.4% growth in revenues from 2006 and remains ahead of Deloitte by $2 billion.

Advisory increased 14.6% to US$5.7 billion; tax services was up 15.1% to US$6.3 billion; assurance up 6.7% to US$13.1 billion...



Deloitte and Touche: Revs up 16% to $23 Billion


Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (Deloitte) recently reported revenues were up by 15.5% to US$23.1 billion for the fiscal year ended 31 May 2007. This is the firm's fifth consecutive year of double-digit revenue growth with each service line and region increasing at double-digit rates...




KPMG Says M&A Market About to Peak

KPMG is calling the top of the M&A market!


The firm's Corporate Finance's Global M&A Predictor is indicating that global merger and acquisition activity is about to peak. Further, it thinks that overall deal volumes in 2007 will be below records achieved in 2006. How do they do this: looking at a forward index of 1,000 leading companies' net debt to EBITDA ratios and Price Earnings ratios shows that things are slowing - 12 month forward PE valuations is increasing only marginally. However, there is still money sloshing around - cash and debt level remain high, but investor confidence and appetite are certainly more conservative...






PricewaterhouseCoopers - Class Action Law Suit Looms


PricewaterhouseCoopers could be potentially facing a class action law suit for overtime pay...it looks that the Canadian law suit bug may have just slipped over the border.


The fundamental issue claimed against the Big4 is essentially the same - employees supposedly made to work long hours without being paid overtime pay. In this case, Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff (KCR) appears to be investigating a potential class action lawsuit on behalf of these associates against the Big4 accounting firms...