Posts

We Want You! How The Big 4 Sells To Students

I continue to receive great input based on my request to interview recent Big 4 interviewees. We’ve talked about the starting salary issue and rather than beat that one to death, I’ll put it aside for now while I gather more info from all sides. In the meantime, let’s focus on the recruiting aspect of […]

Starting Salary Symphony

You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get at least what others with temporarily more power have decided that you need. Apologies to Mick Krupo up in the Great White North has some thoughts on my post about Big 4 starting salaries. He also repeats the oft heard whine that higher tuition […]

Is The Fix In On Starting Pay?

Picture Source The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog has become a go-to read for me. As some of you have seen, I have an interest in the intersection between law and accounting. I have found the blog to be written much more freewheelingly than its front page. That is, there’s a lot more latitude given […]

Update – Wal-Mart Feeling Annoyed and Oppressed Now That Everyone Knows Everything

Who else tries to seal documents? Update: Judge Rejects Wal-Mart Effort To Block Public View of Documents A North Carolina state judge rejected an attempt by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to block public access to certain court documents in a tax dispute with state authorities. ********************************************************************************* In a further development in the case of Wal-Mart, E&Y […]

You Can Put Lipstick On A Pig, But…

Yesterday I mentioned in passing that Deloitte is considering a rebranding effort, ostensibly to solidify their position as a Consulting Firm rather than an Audit Firm. I can understand the desire to distance yourself from the train wreck that is the auditing business. It’s less a business model than government-sanctioned vehicle for organized crime against […]

Why Did Jesse James Rob Banks?

…Because that’s where the money is! (Interestingly, he was shot by one of his own gang…) For the US Department of Justice, it’s getting to be like shooting fish in a barrel. But how quickly they’ve decided not to prosecute the firm. Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Does it have […]

Auditor Independence and Management Consulting – Deja Vu All Over Again

To introduce this topic, let’s start with excerpts from a Frontline series, dated June 2002, Bigger Than Enron. In the segment entitled Congress and the Accounting Wars, the history and politics of independence legislation supported strongly by then SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt and eventually incorporated in the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation of 2002 is described. At the […]