tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13890598.post3825533911505462624..comments2023-11-24T06:43:20.699-05:00Comments on The Big Four Blog: Canada's Number 5 and 6 Accounting Firms Call Off Merger Talkswww.Big4.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17008497768518419081noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13890598.post-14695494282398610592007-05-18T14:37:00.000-04:002007-05-18T14:37:00.000-04:00This seemed like a great idea--BDO was weak in Que...This seemed like a great idea--BDO was weak in Quebec and Atlantic Canada and GT was strong there. But this was probably doomed from the start. Both BDO and GT had their own international affiliates and without a worldwide merger, they would have needed to choose one over the other. So each stood to lose a lot of international referral work if they merged. BDO has a much more decentralized structure than GT. GT took more from each partner for the central "pot", which may have been hard for BDO to swallow. BDO has offices in every whistle stop in Ontario--some with only one partner. Likewise GT has offices in every whistle stop in Atlantic Canada. BDO has always had an aggessive management style. When they merged with Ward Mallette, they called it BDO Dunwoody Ward Mallette for awhile, but eventually WM disappeared from the name. BDO generally puts work ahead of personal life for partners. At one time, BDO actually had a written guideline that partnership meant enduring "personal inconvenience" for the sake of the firm. But the kicker was probabaly the pension arrangements that BDO had, with several partners entitled to over $500K per year of pension payments; of course this is an unfunded liability. GT partners would have had to agree to guarantee funding for those payments. Also, BDO and GT are both schizophrenic firms. They each want to be the alternative to the Big 4, auditing public companies, but then how do you convince the one partner office in Wiarton or Wingham Ontario, population 2,400 each, to accept the risk of auditing billion dollar companies? Especially when one of the predecessor firms to GT, Pannell Kerr etc. almost went under in the 80s. Their bank actually called the Calgary office loans and the Calgary partners overdrew their capital accounts and ran off leaving the other partners to pay their bills. Lots of the partners from that era are still around and are gun shy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com