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...

Monday, September 10, 2007

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP UK turnover up 6%, profits grow 11%


PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP United Kingdom recently reported a 6% increase for FY 2007 turnover to £2.1 billion. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP FY07 financial year runs from 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2007.

Of this:

  • Assurance increased 4% to £947 million (core audit services grew 8%)
  • Tax turnover sped up 13% to £667 million
  • Turnover in Advisory grew moderately at 4% to £493 million (Performance Improvement Consulting grew by 8%. Net revenue growth in Corporate Finance was 12%)
  • Revenue at Business Recovery Services unit (aka bankruptcy consulting) declined due to good economic conditions


Underlying net revenue increased 9% and underlying profit shot up 11% to £631 million from £586 million in 2006.

Average profit per partner rose 6% to £757,000, with partner numbers up to 822. 56 new partners were admitted on 1 July 2007, with 15 new partners recruited externally during the course of FY07.

Note that turnover includes expenses and disbursements associated with client assignments; and underlying net revenue excludes these items.
Recently we blogged that Deloitte UK reported even stronger results: Sales were up 16% and profits payable to partners were up 17%, profit per partner was £877,00. Deloitte UK has now turnover of £1.8 billion and profits of £572 million and 652 partners.

It appears that Deloitte UK is growing both the top and bottom lines much faster than PwC UK; we don’t have enough reported information to really analyze why this differential exists.


But if this is indicative of global results which are to come shortly, it may not be long before Deloitte beats PwC in revenue as Deloitte posts high double-digits revenue gains versus high single-digits revenue growth for PwC. We shall see in November 2007!

http://www.ukmediacentre.pwc.com/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=2448&NewsAreaID=2

Ouch! BearingPoint Stock Dives 12% to New Low


BearingPoint Inc. dropped almost 13% to $4.80 today in mid-day trading hitting a new all-time low. BE shares have traded between $5.49 and $9 in the past 12 months...



CapGemini Pushes Google's Office Suite - Takes Lead

Watch out Microsoft!

We see that CapGemini will start to push Google online office software (email & calendar management, word processing, spreadsheet) to its corporate clients. This happens to the first time that a large technology consulting (and Big Four) firm is partnering with Google for this set of services. Earlier we had blogged that BearingPoint had partnered with Google to apply its corporate search application to customers.


Friday, September 07, 2007

KPMG Sued in Canada


Here’s an interesting one….KPMG in Canada has been served with a class action lawsuit by former employees that it forced hundred of (mainly tax accountants and auditors) employees to work overtime without paying for such additional time. The lawsuit seeks at least $20 million in punitive damages...





Wednesday, September 05, 2007

PwC Pays $3 million to Justice to Settle Allegations

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and IBM are paying $5 million to settle allegations that both these firms made improper payments on government technology contracts. PwC’s share: $3.2 million, IBM’s share: $3.0 million...





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

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

E&Y Has Big Growth Plans for China


Ernst & Young wants to increase its Chinese staff from 8,000 to a whopping 32,000 in ten years, a nearly 400% increase. The hot Chinese economy is creating terrific demand for Big Four services and Big Four personnel. Every Big Four accounting firm is bursting at the seams with demand and business, moreover job hopping is becoming common, and companies are complaining about the shortage of experienced audit personnel...





Monday, September 03, 2007

Deloitte UK Revenues Up 16%, Profit Soars 17%


Deloitte UK recently posted results, audit firms in the UK need to publish financials, unlike their counterparts in the US


Nonetheless, these profits are quite healthy and pleasant to disclose:

For the year ending May 31, 2007 profits available for distribution to partners and retired partners was £572 million, up 17% from previous year; and revenues grew to £1,802 million, up 15.6%...



Saturday, August 18, 2007

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP UK turnover up 6%, profits grow 11%.


PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP United Kingdom recently reported a 6% increase for FY 2007 turnover to £2.1 billion. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP FY07 financial year runs from 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2007...





Tuesday, August 14, 2007

BDO Seidman Ordered to Pay $521 Million Fine


We have a story about one of the Big Six, and it appears that the risks of doing business as Big Four auditors are not confined to them alone.


BDO Seidman has been ordered to pay $170 million in compensation and $351 million punitive damages. The charges: being negligent to show fraud in Bankest, a financial services company owned by a Portuguese bank, Banco Espirito Santo. A six member jury decided that BDO was guilty in one hour, having found it grossly negligent in June...


Wednesday, August 08, 2007

CapGemini CTO Ponders on Mass Collaboration


Open Source Innovation and Alumni Mass Collaboration


We have mentioned Big Four in-house bloggers earlier and in particular Andy Mulholland, CTO of CapGemini, and here is an interesting recent blog from him, where he notes that mass collaboration amongst a multitudes of experts can enable exponential advances in research frontiers (Wikinomics). Here is the link to the post. The rest of the blog is good reading too...




KPMG Finds Chemical Mergers On the Upswing

KPMG recently released a report on global Chemicals M&A activity, with a particular emphasis on Europe. World chemicals sales in 2005 were a whopping EUR 1,476 billion, with the EU accounting for 30% of this total. 13 of the top 30 companies in the world, accounting for 15% of chemicals sales have HQs in Europe...




PricewaterhouseCoopers Involved Deeply in China Olympics


PricewaterhouseCoopers Audits 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games


We are exactly one year away from a special date in one of the rapidly growing economies of the world.

08/08/08 marks the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China....




Deloitte Finds US Multinationals With Domestic Focus


A Deloitte study finds that US multinationals still have a domestic mentality regarding compensation despite their rapid globalization.

The recently released International Stock Plan Design and Administration Survey, released by Deloitte Tax LLP along with the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals, had a number of interesting findings...