New Zealand have resigned to join a competitor firm. Paul
Kiesanowksi has been named as the new managing partner of the
Christchurch office and is being supported by additional partners
from other KPMG offices, the Big Four firm said. According to
Christchurch daily newspaper The Press, the rival firm is
Ernst & Young and the combination will bring Ernst &
Young’s representation in New Zealand’s third-largest city to nine
partners and 150 staff.
• WHK Group has acquired four new businesses
under ‘tuck-in’ arrangements with existing member firms. The
combined acquisitions bring A$2.4 million ($2.3 million) in annual
revenue to the stock exchange-listed member of Horwath
International. The acquisitions include accounting firm Bonney
Hortle & Partners, with annual revenue of A$1.2 million, which
has merged with Tasmanian firm WHK Garrotts. Also to merge with WHK
Garrotts were two other Tasmanian businesses, sole practitioner M
Summers and business consultants Total Business Consultants, which
have combined annual revenues of A$1.1 million. New Zealand firm
WHK Coffey Davidson has also acquired a small risk insurance
business with A$60,000 in annual revenue.
• Two new courses have been launched following an agreement
between the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of
India and Indira Gandhi National Open
University. The courses will focus on financial and cost
accounting, management accounting and financial strategies.
• CPA Australia has helped establish a
A$750,000 scholarship programme to address the skills shortage and
raise the standard of the profession in Singapore.
The scholarship is the result of a relationship between CPA
Australia, 11 leading Singapore employers and three local
universities that will fund more than 300 accounting students
through a post-graduate course. The course will teach students
about global accounting standards and ethics.
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By GlobalDataCPA Australia president Alex Malley said: “By giving the
brightest students the opportunity to commence both professional
qualifications and rewarding internship opportunities before they
graduate, we are giving them a head-start on a successful career in
accounting.” The Big Four are all participating in the
programme.
• CPA Australia has suggested preparers of
financial reports whose financial years end on 30 June could
consider early adoption of the Australian accounting standards AASB
8 Operating Segments and AASB 2008-2 Amendments to Australian
Accounting Standards – Puttable Financial Instruments and
Obligations Arising on Liquidation.
The institute said proprietary companies and for-profit unlisted
public companies, except for those entities with immediate plans to
list on a stock exchange, that adopt AASB 8 early are permitted to
discontinue with segment reporting because of the standard’s
narrower scope of application. The institute also noted that
co-operatives and partnerships may benefit from the early-adoption
of AASB 2008-2, a standard that amends AASB 132 Financial
instruments: presentation.
• The Arab Society of Certified Accountants
(ASCA) has been accredited by the Accountants Licensing Committee
at the Yemeni Ministry of Industry and Trade. The accreditation
came as part of numerous revisions the ministry was introducing to
the law that regulates the accounting profession, according to a
letter sent to ASCA by the Yemeni department. These revisions aim
at making accounting more consistent with global developments,
especially in light of negotiations for Yemen to join the World
Trade Organisation, the letter said.
• The Philippine Financial Reporting Standards
Council has approved the adoption of amendments to IFRS by
the International Accounting Standards Board. Amendments to IAS 32,
Financial Instruments: Presentation; IAS 1, Presentation of
Financial Statements (revised 2007) – Puttable Financial
Instruments and Obligations Arising on Liquidation; IFRS 2
Share-based Payment – Vesting Conditions and Cancellations; IFRS 3
Business Combinations; and, IAS 27 Consolidated and Separate
Financial Statements.
The amendments are all intended to improve accounting for
particular financial instruments that are classified as financial
liabilities. The revisions are based on comments from previous
exposure drafts and are expected to be effective from 1 July
2009.
• The Hong Kong Securities and Futures
Commission (SFC) has re-appointed Angelina Lee as
non-executive director for a term of two years from 1 August to 31
July 2010.
SFC chairman Eddy Fong said: “I am delighted to be able to
continue working with Lee, whose insights and advice have benefited
the SFC a great deal over the past two years. I am certain the SFC
and the Hong Kong financial market will continue to benefit from
her wealth of experience and expertise.”
• The Australian Auditing and Assurance Standards
Board has issued Guidance Statement 008 – The Auditor’s
Report on a Remuneration Report Pursuant to Section 300A of the
Corporations Act 2001. In complying with the guidance, the
auditor’s report will now have two distinct sections: the
conventional section that includes the auditor’s opinion on the
financial report; and a new section, which contains the auditor’s
opinion on the remuneration disclosures in the directors’
report.
Europe
• A former Ernst & Young UK (E&Y)
partner has been appointed deputy chair of the UK Financial
Reporting Review Panel. David Lindsell, a panel member since
January 2007, replaces Ian Brindle, who has completed his final
term. Lindsell recently resigned from E&Y where he was an audit
engagement partner and global director of IFRS services. He is
currently a member of the International Accounting Standards Board
standards advisory council and the supervisory board of the
European Financial Reporting Advisory Group.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) firms throughout
Europe have appointed a series of new partners. PwC Romania has
appointed three new partners, strengthening advisory, indirect
taxes and the assurance departments. Miroslav Bratrych has also
been promoted to partner within the PwC Czech Republic transaction
department.
• Grant Thornton UK has made a new addition to
its pensions advisory team. Len Fawke joined Grant Thornton from
watchdog the Pensions Regulator where he headed scheme funding.
Fawke is both a chartered accountant and chartered tax advisor and
was previously a partner dealing with a wide range of corporate
transactions at a Big Four firm.
• MSI Global Alliance has strengthened its European
representation with the addition of a new member firm in the
Ukraine. Alt, a professional services practice,
has 15 members of staff and is based in Kiev. The firm provides a
range of audit, tax, accounting, management consulting and project
finance services.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Ireland has
appointed 11 new partners in a variety of departments throughout
the firm. The new partners include: Lisa Hayden, Tom Corbett, Emma
Scott, Ronan MacNioclais, Brian Bergin, Irene O’Keefe, Dervia
McCormack, Garrett Cronin, Gavan Ryle, Patricia Johnston and Andrea
Kelly.
PwC is the highest fee income earning firm in the Republic of
Ireland with €210 million ($330.5 million), according to last
year’s International Accounting Bulletin’s survey of the
republic’s accounting profession. KPMG Ireland is listed above PwC
but its fee income includes Northern Ireland.
• The UK firm BDO Stoy Hayward has admitted ten
employees as new partners. Seven of the partners are based in
London and the remaining three are located in Southampton, Glasgow
and Leeds. Outgoing BDO Stoy Hayward managing partner Jeremy Newman
said: “These promotions demonstrate the firm’s continued commitment
to invest in great people and to ensure we have the capability for
continued growth. Our ability to promote from within is also a
clear sign of the firm’s depth of home-developed talent.”
• The UK’s largest professional services firm admitted 58 new
partners on 1 July. PwC UK has also recruited 22
new partners externally during the past 12 months, bringing to 80
the total number of new partners admitted during the firm’s
2007/2008 financial year.
Twenty-nine of the new partners were admitted to the assurance
practice, 26 partners to the advisory practice and 25 to the tax
practice. Of the new partner intake, 29 percent are female,
bringing the total number of female partners to 107. Four new
appointments have also been made within the firm’s strategy group.
Nick George and Olivia Gillan have been promoted internally, while
Richard Kibble and Johan van den Arend Schmidt have been hired from
other strategy consulting firms. The UK firm’s strategy team now
has 13 partners and 130 consulting staff members.
• Dan Thomas has joined KPMG Forensic from outsourcing and
consultancy services specialist Huntswood. Thomas joins the
practice as a partner and head of European sales and marketing. The
KPMG Europe forensic practice has 450 staff with
annual revenue of about £70 million ($140 million).
• KPMG UK has appointed Stuart Lawson to join
its chief restructuring officer (CRO) team. The Big Four firm said
Lawson joins the CRO team with the objective of enhancing the full
service turnaround practice in the market.
North America, Latin America
• The US firm BDO Seidman has appointed 18 new
partners. Eleven of the new partners are in the assurance practice,
four are in the tax business line, two are with BDO Consulting and
one is in human resources. BDO Seidman chief executive Jack
Weisbaum said: “The key to maintaining growth is a commitment to
continued technical excellence and superior client service. Each of
these new partners is an example of that.”
• Six notable deficiencies have been highlighted by the US
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board during
its annual review of PwC US. The board conducts an annual
inspection of each registered public accounting firm that regularly
audits more than 100 issuers as a requirement of the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act. The faults identified in the report included failing to test
the underlying data and calculation of an award allocation and
failure to test the fair value of an issuer’s software products. In
a letter responding to the inspection drafts, PwC said additional
audit procedures were only required and performed in once instance.
The letter added that in no instances did the additional procedures
or documentation impact its conclusions, the issuer’s financial
statements or PwC’s report.
• Howard Roth has replaced Dale Anne Reiss as head of
Ernst & Young’s (E&Y) global real estate
practice. Roth, who previously led the Northeast real estate
practice of E&Y US, has worked extensively in the real estate
business for 30 years and will co-ordinate a network of 5,000 real
estate sector staff around the world. Roth said under his
leadership the practice would focus on a number of key priorities,
including worldwide infrastructure development and privatisation,
sustainability and responsible property investing, the credit
slowdown and the movement towards reporting under IFRS as a
replacement for US GAAP.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers US (PwC) has released
a full suite of educational tools and programmes designed to help
American accounting students learn the fundamentals of IFRS. The
firm claimed its programme, IFRS Ready, was the first corporate
education programme on IFRS being distributed directly to
interested students and the first programme to provide tools for
professors to use in their classrooms linked to the student
materials.
PwC US partner Dave Kaplan said: “It is an engaging experience
for students. It focuses them on many of the larger accounting
differences between the two sets of standards. It is also an easy
way for professors to introduce international standards to their
students and start them down the path towards understanding IFRS,
the set of accounting standards that students will use for the vast
majority of their business careers.”
• Enterprise Network Worldwide, a global alliance of independent
accounting and consulting firms, has admitted a three-partner firm
in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Morrison & Smith
offers services in tax, bookkeeping and auditing. The firm has
three partners.
