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In 2011, the vast majority of public companies – those with market caps under $75 million – are required to file their 10-K and 10-Q with the SEC in XBRL for the first time. Is this another mandate translating into more business for the Big 4 or an opportunity for other audit firms to specialize and capitalize? A guest post from Daniel Roberts.
Didn’t want to make you wait until Friday for this one.
The world of private equity, mergers and acquisitions advisory, and transaction services is a small one. Mix in troubled company restructuring, the turbo-charged atmosphere of Silicon Valley, and high tech, and the stew is a spicy mix of people and deals.
KPMG, external auditors for HBOS, were front and center in the controversy over written testimony from Paul Moore, HBOS’ former head of regulatory risk and a former KPMG partner. A guest posting on February 19, 2009 over at The Financial Times’ FT Alphaville blog.
“IFRS For Everyone” is not just another well-crafted campaign for a government-sanctioned “next big thing” to sustain the Big 4’s untenable, unsustainable, obsolete business model that produces a, purported by some, worthless product. The Big 4 are bringing their best and brightest minds, from all over the world, to the US to evangelize their colleagues and transform their clients. Deloitte has partner Nick Difazio on the job.
Marin County’s suit against Deloitte is a “game changer,” one “that has the potential to reshape important aspects of the systems integration business…” Now they’ve decided to dump SAP and ZDNet”s Michael Krigsman thinks that move may be motivated more by the lawsuit than by sound strategy.
When Mark O’Conner of Monadnock Research asked for my initial reaction to the deal I had to admit I hadn’t thought much about it. Diamond Technology, a true-blue Chicago born and bred company, is small potatoes. They never achieved the billion dollar revenue goals the founder had envisioned. PwC has potentially bought a pig in a poke.
Protiviti is currently soliciting feedback for its new Sarbanes-Oxley Insight Survey.
The results of this survey promise to provide valuable and important insight into the current state of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for all types of organizations.
My friend Roopen Roy’s most recent column for MyDigitalFC.com is entitled, “Why Mergers In FirmsFall Apart.” Roopen Roy is the Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting, India.
Sarbanes-Oxley (SOx) made law what is best practice for all public companies or companies that issue public debt. That includes “smaller” companies.
I think about the “one-firm firm” concept frequently. It’s an ideal that I can safely say all the Big 4 audit firms aspire to. And David Maister was the guru when I started in consulting in 1993 at KPMG Consulting. Later my mentor gave me his book, Managing Professional Services Firms, and I was hooked on the theory of professional services as well as the practice. So much has changed even in my professional life, which only goes back to the early 80’s. Front and center are the threats to the global network of all the firms and the focus on aggressive growth while diluting the partnership culture of the firms by perverting their compensation structure. Partner performance assessment has become a short-term, self-serving tool to throw disproportionate wealth to a small group of senior leadership.
 Francine McKenna (@retheauditors) has more than twenty-five years of experience in consulting and professional services including tenure at two Big 4 firms, both in the US and abroad. Look for my column, "Accounting Watchdog" at Forbes.com and "Accountable" at American Banker. For more information, click "About" at the bottom of this page. Your firm can sponsor this specialized news site. For more information contact Francine McKenna, fmckenna@mckennapartners.com |
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