As promised, I wanted to give you a flavor for some of the side emails and comments I have been getting in response to my post last week on Big 4 starting salaries. I am reprinting a few here, with minimal commentary and with the names and places changed to protect the weary, frustrated and […]
I have noticed quite a few searches for “starting salaries” leading to this blog. It’s the season when you’re getting offers and you want to know if they’re true and fair and competitive. You need to start planning how to pay off those loans. You want to gloat over your fellow students who studied liberal […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
“News” broke yesterday that GM reported, “ineffective internal controls over financial reporting might make it difficult for the company to execute on its business plan.” They are also still under investigation by the SEC on several matters, including financial reporting related to pension accounting, transactions with suppliers including GM’s former subsidiary Delphi Corp., and transactions […]
I am afraid I don’t have much to say about the appointment of Sir Michael Rake of KPMG as Chairman of British Telecom. I guess once you become “knighted” you’re too good for the accounting firms. He should have a broader stage. What’s funny is the repeated mention of his “key ” role in resolving […]
What do Home Depot, Computer Associates (CA) and the Diocese of Rockville Center, NY have in common? Strangely enough, they all have a connection to the ongoing lawsuits to reclaim the $139.5m payment Richard Grasso received in 2003 for his eight years as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. There are players in common, […]
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 […]
