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Big 4
Big Four Accounting Firms Ebb as Feeder for Corporate CFO Jobs [Bloomberg Tax]
Long-term recruiting trends show top accounting and consulting firms are slipping as a dominant contributor to the talent pipeline for chief financial officers at big publicly traded companies, though they remain a common launching point. About one-quarter of CFOs at large US-listed companies in the S&P 500 index bring past work experience at PricewaterhouseCoopers and its Big Four firm peers Ernst & Young, Deloitte, and KPMG. Add in other common firms where CFOs have previously worked—such as McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group—and that figure rises to one-third with an accounting or consulting background. That’s according to an analysis of Bloomberg data on company management profiles, LinkedIn profiles, and corporate leadership biographies.
Ex-Deloitte auditor reveals gruelling 20-hour shifts, working till 5 am amid EY row [Hindustan Times]
The tragic death of a 26-year-old EY Pune employee has sparked a conversation around work pressure and demanding corporate culture. Many shared their experiences of working in big corporate houses and struggling to maintain a proper work-life balance. Among them is an auditor who wrote how it was for him to work at a Big 4 firm, claiming he was employeed at Deloitte.
I’ve always noticed that it is some kind of flex in office always that who works for larger time.
— Jayesh Jain (@arey_jainsaab) September 18, 2024
I’ve always seen my senior colleagues brag that: Arey tum 11 baje log out kar diye? Mene toh 5 baje tak kaam kara.
No work life balance.. Completely brainwashed slaves.
Earlier: Mother Pens Letter Calling Out EY After Her Overworked Daughter Suddenly Passed Away at 26
Deloitte Forms Committee To Review Employee Practices Amid EY Work Pressure Controversy [NDTV]
Amid a social media storm over the death of a young employee at tax consultancy major EY allegedly due to work pressure, Deloitte has formed a three-member external committee, which includes former revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj, to look into practices, policies and processes concerning employees, its South Asia CEO Romal Shetty said on Friday. Shetty said to manage the work pressure within the organization.
LSBF, Deloitte to create upskilling programmes [International Accounting Bulletin]
The London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) Singapore Campus has partnered with Deloitte to co-develop a suite of upskilling programmes for junior to mid-level professionals in the finance and accounting sectors.
Take a risk? CFOs say now is not a good time [Axios]
Here’s a stunning stat: Only 12% of chief financial officers say that now is a good time to take greater risks, according to a Deloitte survey out Wednesday morning. Why it matters: This could be an indicator of an economic slowdown to come.
PwC looks for way forward in increasingly difficult China terrain [Bamboo Works]
The PwC case also shows how multinationals are coming increasingly under the microscope on government concerns about their potential to pose national security risks amid growing tensions between China and the U.S. Auditing is especially sensitive since it involves access to extensive market data that Beijing worries could be leaked to foreign governments. To avoid that, it has been urging state-owned enterprises to switch to local auditors from foreign ones like PwC. In this regulatory climate, foreign businesses wishing to stay in China have no choice but to walk a tightrope between keeping both their clients and the government happy. And as the Evergrande case shows, sometimes it’s not easy to do both. That can be problematic for the broader China business of a company like PwC, whose other clients have been jumping ship over concerns about the company’s future.
Talent
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News
Cybersecurity firm flags attack on construction accounting system [Construction Dive]
Ellicott City, Maryland-based cybersecurity firm Huntress has discovered an emerging threat for users of Foundation Software, which bills itself as serving 43,000 construction professionals nationwide. In a Sept. 17 report, Huntress said plumbing, HVAC, concrete and similar subcontractors were actively impacted.
And the company response:
The impacted clients did not follow the protocol of changing their user ID and password, said Mike Ode, Foundation’s CEO, who noted the firm hosts the vast majority of its customers via its software-as-a-service offering. “If you buy a software and you install it at your place, you are responsible for the security and the walls and the perimeter, right?” Ode told Construction Dive. “We’re responsible for what we’ve been selling for the last decade, and that’s a hosted solution.” He urged impacted firms to adopt hosted software instead. “We want everybody in our SaaS-hosted environment, right? Let us do it. Let us take on the responsibility,” Ode said. He asserted the attack mentioned in the report may have impacted just a single client, but acknowledged he didn’t know for certain.
Low bidders bypassed for state contract to probe mystery $1.8B [The Nerve]
A global consulting firm hired by the state [of South Carolina] to investigate the mystery $1.8 billion and related financial questions was not the low bidder for the “potential” $3 million contract, records obtained by The Nerve show. But under state law, procurement officials don’t have to accept the lowest bid but instead can use other purchasing procedures depending on the situation, including issuing a “request for proposals,” which was done by the S.C. Department of Administration in awarding a contract in July to New York-based AlixPartners in connection with the investigation of the $1.8 billion.
People
Ernst & Young names new Denver chief [Denver Business Journal]
The accounting and professional services giant said Andrea Lovelady will take over as Denver office managing partner beginning Oct. 1. Mark Belfance, who held the position since 2016, will retire this year, the company said.
Grant Thornton’s Jessica Knott named one of the Most Influential Women in Business by the San Francisco Business Times [Business Wire]
Jessica Knott, an Audit & Assurance partner at Grant Thornton, has been named one of San Francisco’s “Most Influential Women in Business” by the San Francisco Business Times. Each year, the publication recognizes leaders in the Bay Area for their impact on their industry and the community. “She builds genuine relationships with her clients and colleagues, and her unrivaled tech industry knowledge has allowed her to guide dozens of clients through each evolution of that sector.” Knott is the third consecutive woman from Grant Thornton to receive this award. Melanie Krygier, Grant Thornton’s Private Equity Tax leader, was recognized in 2023; and Rimma Tabakh, Grant Thornton’s market managing principal in San Francisco, received the accolade in 2022.
AI
AI, the infinite intern [Accountancy Today]
So, for the tax and accounting industry, what is the best lens to view genAI through in its current stage? I think it would be helpful for most organisations to think of it as the ‘infinite intern’ – i.e. a round-the-clock resource that is happy to do anything thrown its way, at scale, and has the ability to turn around jobs extremely quickly albeit being prone to frequent errors and therefore requiring close monitoring. When genAI is approached with this mindset, the tasks it is best suited to start to become much more apparent. For instance, while it shouldn’t necessarily be trusted with one-off, high value tasks, it excels at automating routine tasks and reconciling large amounts of data that would otherwise take many hours or even days to get through. Doing so not only slashes the time taken to complete such tasks, but it also frees up tax professionals to focus on strategic activities that are much more valuable to the organisation as a whole.
Live Broadcast: AI and automation in the accounting industry [Accountancy Age]
Tim Baker, CEO of Kloo, and Sean Smith, Accountant Evangelist at Sage, explore the transformative power of AI and automation.
Nisivoccia on AI’s Role in the Changing Landscape of Accounting [New Jersey Business & Industry Association]
On this past weekend’s Minding Your Business on News 12+, Nisivoccia Principal of Client Accounting Services Vicki Kosuda joined host Bob Considine to discuss the upswing of Artificial Intelligence in accounting, and how AI can help improve cash flow planning management for all businesses. Kosuda explained that AI’s ability to rapidly process data will change the nature of how accountants serve their clients. “It’s really going to help the client versus the entering the data, figuring out what happened before, what happened now, compiling the data, to then have those important conversations,” she said.
CFOs juggle strategy, economic pressures in AI push: Billtrust [CFO Dive]
While businesses have rapidly adopted new technologies to improve their customer-facing products and services, back-of-house functions — such as finance — have lagged behind the digitization curve. However, with finance teams under growing pressure to deliver more strategic insights faster, today’s finance chiefs are taking a second look at how they can bring new technologies such as artificial intelligence into spaces like their order-to-cash processes. With finance asked to improve its efficiency, optimize their processes and improve key metrics such as sales outstanding and customer defaults, CFOs recognize “they’re not going to get there by telling people to work harder or throwing more people at it,” Sunil Rajasekar, CEO of accounting software provider Billtrust, said in an interview. “They recognize with the pressures of today, they have to digitize.”
AI driven accounting will replace monthly close by 2030, says research [Verdict]
New research commissioned by global accounting software platform Sage predicts that, by 2030, three quarters of businesses will abandon the accounting practice of the traditional monthly close in preference to AI driven real-time accounting. The research found that 98% of respondents anticipate that AI will improve monthly close accounting efficiency in the next five years, and 54% anticipate an efficiency boost of 20% or more. Some 53% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that AI would allow them to completely abandon accounting to a monthly close schedule.
Scammers Using AI to Clone Voices, Drain Bank Accounts As Deloitte Forecasts $30,000,000,000 in AI Losses by 2027 [The Daily Hodl]
Cybersecurity expert Thomas Hyslip, who spent two decades in federal law enforcement with the Secret Service and the Department of Defense, says it takes a matter of seconds to create impostor audio. “Historically they had to manually go out and steal credit cards… Now with AI they can take what they already have and use that to enhance their ability to commit fraud… Some of them, you can do [in] as many as 30 seconds. You can clone somebody’s voice and then make phone calls or, you know, use it to try to trick voice recognition. Some of the banks now use voice recognition in place of the phone number.” Big Four accounting firm Deloitte says its base case forecast finds fraud from generative AI will reach $30 billion by 2027, rising from $12.3 billion in 2023.
Meanwhile, in Law
Women Law Professors, Students Across The Country Continue To Receive Creepy Texts From Unidentified 2L [Above the Law]
Back in January, female professors at law schools across the country started receiving strange text messages from an unidentified source who claimed that “law school isn’t fair for us men anymore” because “women always outperform us now.” The next month, as the unsettling messages continued, lamenting how “unfair” it is that “women have clearly won the battle of the sexes,” leaving men as “the losers,” the FBI reportedly began an investigation into the matter. Now, nearly nine months later, the odd text messages are still ongoing, and it’s not just law professors who are receiving them — female law students are, too.
