Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers At Davos 2010

The World Economic Forum starts tomorrow Wednesday January 27, 2010 for four jam-packed days of the world’s most powerful and influential leaders from industry, government, academia and non-profit organizations. The sessions cover an extraordinary variety of interesting topics and bring together the planet’s best minds to discuss, debate, validate and set forth actions to improve human life and sensibility...

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All Big Four Firms Are Best Companies To Work For In 2009

All the Big Four firms recently made Fortune’s 2009 “100 Best Companies to Work For” list, though not at the very top as we have become very accustomed to seeing in BusinessWeek or Diversity or Working Mothers magazine. Nonetheless a very creditable performance against a tough crowd of equally impressive and quality peers. 2009 sported tougher competition as three of the five firms dropped rank from the 2008 listing...

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PricewaterhouseCooopers Gains Top Rating From Gartner

We see from a recent press release that PricewaterhouseCoopers has received a “Strong Positive” rating in Gartner’s Global Finance Management Consulting Services MarketScope Report, which was published recently on December 21, 2009...

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Accenture’s Animal Ads: Can Dancing Elephants and Jumping Frogs Help?

About four weeks ago, on Sunday December 13th, 2009, Accenture ended its six-year sponsorship of Tiger Woods. We had blogged extensively on this topic:

On December 9th, we argued that Accenture should not continue sponsorship on moral grounds and should be the first to drop sponsorship...

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Auditor Merry Go Round at Overstock.com

                              We were intrigued by a recent quote from Overstock.com's President.

On December 29, 2009,we saw, "It is nice to be back with a Big Four accounting firm," said Jonathan Johnson, President of Overstock.com. "We are pleased to have the resources and professionalism that KPMG brings as our auditors. We will work closely with them to timely file our 2009 Form 10-K. In the meantime, we remain in discussions with the SEC to answer the staff's questions on the accounting matters that lead to our filing an unreviewed Form 10-Q for Q3."...

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THE 2009 BIG FOUR FIRMS PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

THE 2009 BIG FOUR FIRMS PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

DOWNLOAD THE FULL STUDY HERE

An Analysis Of The 2009 Financial Performance Of The World’s Largest Accounting Firms

By Big4.com

January 2010

THE 2009 BIG FOUR FIRMS PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2009 was a difficult year overall for the Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte, Ernst & Young (E&Y), KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), as their financial performance was affected by tough external conditions, slow global economic growth, cost-conscious clients and sluggish merger and acquisition activity....

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Capgemini Employee Shareholding Plan A Success, Our Math Shows Why

In November 2009, we had reported on the our news feed on Capgemini’s effort to launch a shareholding plan for its employees, with a maximum of 6,000,000 shares reserved for their employees, opening on November 17, 2009 and settlement-delivery of these shares to occur on December 16, 2009...

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Big Ernst and Young Settlement on Bally Fitness, Large Implications

This is the leading item on the SEC.gov website today, with the SEC charging Ernst & Young LLP and 6 current and former partners for their roles in the accounting fraud at Bally Total Fitness Holding Corporation...

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Accenture Q1-2010 Revenue Short But EPS Beats Street. Good Outlook

Accenture Q1-2010 Revenue Short, But EPS Beats Street. Good Outlook

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) just reported Q1-2010 results after market close today. The full earnings release is available on the Accenture.com investor relations site. We will only provide our quick analysis here at this time...

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KPMG 2009 Revenues of $20 B Drop 11%, Most Among Big Four Firms

KPMG just reported its 2009 combined revenues for the fiscal year ending 30 September 2009 of US$20.11 billion versus US$22.69 billion for the prior 2008 fiscal year. This was a 11.4% decline in U.S. dollars terms and a 2.6% decline in local currency terms...

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KPMG Europe Revenues Drop 0.4% As Expected, Audit Shines

KPMG Europe LLP, which covers the UK, German, Swiss, Spanish and Belgian practices just reported its 2009 revenues at €3.5 billion in the year ending 30 September 2009, a 0.4% drop from 2008 on a pro forma basis at constant exchange rates. Overall, KPMG said that top-line growth proved hard to come by as a result of difficult market conditions...

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Big Four Firms Dominate Best Places to Intern Rankings

If you want to find a great job upon graduating from college, then starting early appears to be the secret.

Business Week and Bloomberg just released their third annual listing of top undergraduate internship programs in the country based on pay and the percentage of interns who get full-time jobs, and feedback from career services directors...

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Accenture Makes Right Decision, Drops Tiger Sponsorship

Just now, on the Accenture.com website Newsroom, we find the following news update:

“Accenture Sponsorship Update

Related Assets December 13, 2009NEW YORK; Dec. 13, 2009 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) today announced that it will not continue its sponsorship agreement with Tiger Woods...

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Tiger Drops Golf, Accenture Drops Ads

Yesterday, Tiger Woods made a public statement that he was taking an indefinite break from professional golf on his home page. Much has been made of the exact words used in this statement. Regardless this was the perhaps the right (and very tough) decision to make under these trying circumstances...

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China and Brazil Lead IPO Comeback In 2009

In consonance with a smart pickup in global equity markets from a trough in March 2009 to near January 2009 values towards the end of this year, Initial Public Offerings have also gathered a lot of steam...

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Tiger Woods Dilemma for Accenture – Cloud or Cancer?

Using celebrities as company advertising fronts has both immense rewards and equally high risk. On the positive side, associating with a well-known, successful and popular personality provides instant brand recognition, enhances the company by association and quite often works off the image already created and crafted by that celebrity. The risk however is that any negative impact to that celebrity creates collateral damage for the company, and a long-term association is difficult to quickly unwind...

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KPMG Global Business Outlook Validates Current Optimism and Confidence

KPMG recently released its Global Business Outlook Survey on global manufacturing and services. And it has good news for the world economy and some unexpected surprises.

Overall, the survey indicates that, with manufacturing and service sectors getting more confident, there are robust growth prospects for the world economy over the next 12 months...

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Deloitte Versus KPMG in Dubai World Saga

Just in the last few days, Dubai World (DW) shocked investors all across the world in announcing that it will take steps to seek a six month standstill period on payments of interest and principal on $59 billion of its outstanding debt. This terse and surprising announcement on late Thursday November 25, 2009, the eve of a national holiday in Dubai, spooked stockmarkets all over the globe, with Asian and European markets reacting immediately on open with a 3% drop, before recovering somewhat over the day on Friday...

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Ernst and Young’s Top Entrepreneurs Maintain Vision Despite Tough Conditions

Entrepreneurs are hardy folks. Undeterred by current circumstances, they are entirely focused on their vision and a rosier tomorrow.

And in this deep and difficult recession, Ernst & Young found that entrepreneur-driven companies are still looking for growth and opportunity in these tough times by adapting their operating methods to set themselves up for market leadership when the economy does turn to the upside...

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Deloitte Finds 2009 Holiday Shoppers Will Use A Lot More Social Media

Deloitte’s recently published 24th Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends vindicates what you are likely seeing all around you. Consumers are expected to increasingly use social media for their holiday shopping this year...

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