big four

How much more can we tolerate?

April 13, 2010 Tax and Ethics

When I started AccMan, one of the things I wanted to write about was professional ethics. In the meantime, other voices have emerged that know far more about the topic than I will ever likely know. One of those is Francine McKenna with whom I’ve had a long, helpful and educating relationship. A couple of [...]

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BDO International can breathe again

June 22, 2009 Featured

I’ve been off the grid the last few days and only just catching up. So it seems BDO International escaped the knock on effect of the $522 million judgment against BDO Seidman in the Banco Espiritu Santo (BES) case. The case, which fell in two parts was effectively torpedoed when Miami-Dade Circuit Judge John Schlesinger [...]

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Three little piggies or we all fall down and then what?

May 26, 2009 Tax and Ethics

A couple of weeks ago Jim Peterson digitally urinated all over a piece in AccountancyAge about the Big Four and whether one would fall. In the process, he took a mild swing at Francine and my bet on the same topic. Jim is blunt and to the point. He says not if but when (as [...]

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Is a career in accounting a safe recessionary bet?

April 15, 2009 General

Robert Holland is espousing the ‘safe haven’ status of accounting as a profession to pursue during the recession. He says: We certainly appear to be living in interesting times. All of a sudden careers and jobs that once appeared as attractive and challenging, such as investment banking, now appear risky and unsafe. In such times [...]

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For once I disagree with Francine

April 14, 2009 General

I admire the way Francine McKenna keeps focused on the Big Four and their deficiencies but I disagree with her first central thesis that avoiding RIF could come by: Refocus on the true client – the shareholders and investors of the public firm It’s the ‘shareholders and investors’ where I have an issue. Francine has not [...]

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Why are we not yelling about Geithner's toxic plan?

March 27, 2009 Featured

Professionals should be yelling about Geithner’s apparently toxic plan to solve the US financial crisis.So far – silence. As seems more and more the case, we have to look at what’s going on in the US to gauge whether we’ll have a shirt left on our backs in six months’ time. Right now, it looks [...]

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XBRL and the New Four

February 25, 2009 General

If you have any interest at all in reporting then this last week has been a big one for XBRL, the emerging technology that will change the way global reporting is undertaken. I counted 28 pieces on searchTwitter in the last two days alone. However, the most important pieces did not appear in the technical [...]

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Why you should be watching the US elections

October 8, 2008 General

I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks following events in the US and in particular the US elections. Normally this would be of no interest to me but the Internet allows me the opportunity to gain a ringside seat to the debates going on right now. This is augmented by a [...]

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Should we be concerned over new Reg FD guidance?

August 1, 2008 General

Over at ZDNet, I’ve written an analysis of what I see as the possible impact of new SEC guidance under Reg FD. In essence, the SEC is pointing the way towards company websites and blogs in particular being used as an alternative medium by which information is made available to the public. It’s a novel [...]

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