Posts

In Memoriam – Roberta Gilna Merkel

Executive search is a lot like the real estate business. Headhunters, with very few exceptions, like realtors, are getting paid by the seller or the company that is selling the job that you, as a candidate, are buying. The best ones manage this ethical dilemma well, especially when the compensation package, like the purchase price of […]

Top Ten Reasons You Still Want To Work For The Auditors

College students are being wined, dined, and picked over by the large firms. The recruiting season is in full bloom. One of the most frequent searches leading to my blog is some variation on what to wear to the post-interview fancy restaurant dinner. As you go through the experience, remember: They’ve already established what you […]

Embracing Change – Day by Day

I often think of my career as having had at least four parts, so far…

An Honest Services Crisis: Professional Poison and a Chicago Connection

The Big Four, off and on, have had some of the largest global consulting practices across most categories.The larger an organization gets, the more its staff takes on the average characteristics of individuals within the markets it serves. Mark O’Connor of Monadnock Research presents a guest post on the special risks posed by Big 4 audit firms who provide consulting services.

Special For Forbes: A Business Travel Story About Mexico

Mexico is my great love. So I jumped at the chance to contribute to a Special Report at Forbes, On The Road: The Pleasures and Pain of Business Travel. My piece, Glimpses: Cuernavaca, Mexico, June 2005, is about attending the wedding of a client’s daughter.

Deloitte’s Troubles Bubble To Surface

Mainstream media, and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, are focused mainly on Ernst & Young as the auditor whipping boy of the financial crisis. That’s really by default not by design and is thinly justified. No one has given fly-over journalists anything on a silver platter that would draw in the rest. Give me a few minutes and I can make a case for PricewaterhouseCoopers as the one teetering on the edge of the abyss. Or KPMG. But today, let’s talk about Deloitte.

Is A Big 4 Firm Buying BearingPoint?

Update: March 24, 2009
Looks like I was right. Twice. See new comments posted overnight for more details and a copy of the email that went out to PwC employees announcing the deal.
Today’s Washington Post:

Consulting firm BearingPointappears to be near its end.

The company, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month, said late last night that it had reached an agreement with several parties — including PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte — to sell “substantially all of its businesses.”