Friday, April 30, 2010

Galleon Rajaratnam Sued KPMG In 2005, But Did KPMG Pay?




According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s website, an article today by David Glovin and Patricia Hurtado reveals that Galleon Group co-founder Raj Rajaratnam and Gary Rosenbach had sued KPMG and tax shelter promoter Diversified Group LLC in a Manhattan court in 2005...


EU Starts To Deeply Focus on Big Four Auditors


Following the voluminous and rather scathing report on the Lehman collapse by Anton Valukas, the Lehman Brothers court examiner, and of the reported professional negligence by Ernst & Young, the company’s auditor, it appears that the EU is taking considerable interest in scrutinizing the overall role of public auditors....


We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!  

Compliments of Grant Thornton!


Compliments of Grant Thornton!


This morning in New York City and likely all other big US metro cities, there was a big give-away of Bloomberg's newly revised Bloomberg Business Week magazine, and on the cover was cardboard slip with an intriguing line, "Let's assume your time is valuable."...


Thursday, April 29, 2010

Huron Q1-2010 Short, But FY 2010 Affirmed, Shares Zoom



Huron Consulting Group Inc. (NASDAQ: HURN) came out today with Q1-2010 results, revenues were $138.9 million for Q1 2010 compared to $151.1 million in Q1 2009....



Hiring To Surge in the UK Private Sector


It’s the kind of news that brings good cheer after a deluge of gloomy reports.

The latest quarterly CIPD/KPMG Labour Market Outlook survey in the United Kingdom (800 employers respondents) shows that the country’s emergence out of recession is now leading to better job prospects....


We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!


Wednesday, April 28, 2010

PwC and Deloitte Easily Make Top 100 of Fortune 500 Rankings



Fortune magazine just released its much-awaited 2010 Fortune 500 list of the top US companies, and not surprisingly, Walmart topped the list with a whopping $408 billion in annual sales, followed by oil giants, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, global conglomerate General Electric and the nation’s largest bank, Bank of America coming in fifth place with $150 billion in revenues....





Thursday, April 22, 2010

Formidable Deloitte UK CEO John Connolly To Step Down in May 2011


The TimesOnline of the UK reports that Mr. John Connolly, 59, Senior Partner and Chief Executive of the UK firm and a member of the Board of Partners, will step down in May 2011 after three terms as CEO. Connolly is also Global Managing Director of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Chairman of the Global Management Committee and a member of both the Global Executive and the Global Board of Partners. So a very senior Deloitte leader is leaving the firm shortly....








Grant Thornton On South Africa World Cup: Fewer Visitors Staying Longer


Just yesterday, April 21, 2009, Grant Thornton released its revised projections of the economic impact of the upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup, now about 50 days away, on South Africa. And this was carried this morning April 22, 2010 by the Wall Street Journal, with a slightly different slant...




Monday, April 19, 2010

Top 100 US Accounting Firms Reveal Decline, Glimmers of Hope


Accounting Today (www.webcpa.com, http://www.webcpa.com/news/Accounting-Today-Top-100-Firms-2010-53590-1.html) came out recently with its very insightful, comprehensive and timely 2010 annual ranking of accounting firms in the US. From this wealth of data, we will focus selectively on the Big Four and Next Four firms in this blog post. Thanks to Accounting Today for collating and publishing this very useful summary...





Sunday, April 18, 2010

Grant Thornton: Do Not Expect Higher Salary or Bonus This Year



Grant Thornton has some less than promising news for all professionals.


The firm surveyed 496 U.S. CFOs and senior comptrollers from March 22 through April 5, 2009, and found that 53% plan no salary changes in the next 6 months, while 32% plan to decrease and 15% plan to increase...


Friday, April 16, 2010

PwC's Administration of Lehman Translates to $24,000 Per Hour!


18 months after Lehman Brothers so dramatically collapsed on September 15, 2008, PwC UK issued an update of progress on its role as administrator of Lehman Brothers International (Europe)...




KPMG Finds Tampa and Atlanta Best for Business



A recent KPMG study finds that Tampa is the least-costly place to do business among 22 U.S. large cities/locations owing to its very competitive labor costs, moderately-low office/industrial leasing and sales tax costs help. Following Tampa are Atlanta, Miami and Baltimore, Dallas-Fort Worth, St. Louis, Houston and Phoenix. On the other hand, the most expensive places to do business were Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco...



Thursday, April 15, 2010

BearingPoint and West Monroe Partners In Global Alliance


As many may recall, the US BearingPoint firm essentially went into bankruptcy in 2009, with PwC buying the US commercial consulting business and Deloitte purchasing the federal governmental consulting practice. The European part of BearingPoint was bought out by the local management who continue to operate the firm under the erstwhile name with 3,250 people in 14 European countries focused on commercial, financial and public services clients. And it appears they have been working hard behind the scenes...



Wednesday, April 07, 2010

KPMG Finds Solid Global Economic Recovery Underway


The latest KPMG Global Business Outlook survey shows that economic recovery is happening quite smartly in many major economies around the world. For the third consecutive survey, we are seeing healthy optimism around key measures such as business activity, revenues and profits...