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GT and Robson Rhodes feel TS' wrath
When a footballer in the middle of contract negotiations comes out and vows that he is completely committed to his current employers, you can be sure he will sign for someone else the very next day.
Still dazed from yet another weekend of early summer excess, TS couldn't help but apply this scenario to some breaking accounting news, namely the merger of RSM Robson Rhodes and Grant Thornton.
Lets start with RSM Robson Rhodes, shall we, which just a few months ago was slipping on its negligee and preparing to jump into bed with transatlantic partner RSM McGladrey, only to slap its US suitor in the face in favour of a deal with GT.
Not that David Maxwell, RSM Robson Rhodes managing partner and soon to be Grant
'The resulting organisation will also enhance career opportunities for our people who will become part of a leading organisation that is taking the industry in a new direction,' Maxwell crooned about McGladrey at the time.
The intrepid TS team has asked regularly for updates on the deal since, only to be greeted by confident assertions that once a few pieces of routine paperwork had been completed, Robson Rhodes and McGladrey would - as the Spice Girls sang- become one. Yeah right.
Not that TS should be surprised by the about turn. Just a week before the McGladrey merger that never happened was unveiled in all its splendour, Accountancy Age asked if RSM Robson Rhodes was considering a deal, to which the firm's spin doctor said: 'It just sounds like one of those rumours.'
Otty the tip-top Marathon Man
While TS was rolling of a pub bench on the Thames this weekend, with a sunburn and headache, Ernst & Young boss Mark Otty was surging to a top 1,800 finish in the London marathon.
Otty made it home in a very impressive 3 hours and 12 minutes to finish 1,790 overall and 364th in his men's 40 age group.
TS assumes that Otty was back in training this morning for next year's event. Wouldn't it be interesting if John Connolly, Kieran Poynter and JGJ also threw on the trainers and started working out to see if they could challenge the mega-fit Otty. Any takers?
PwC struts its stuff on the internet
Accountancy and the internet have always been strange bedfellows.
Apart from HM Revenue & Customs pushing online filing, and a few accounting blogs, it’s been hard to get number-crunchers to use the information superhighway to their benefit.
And nothing has changed over the last week. Indeed the web has been abused again with the posting of a seriously embarrassing, but strangely hypnotic, video of accountants making fools of themselves.
Step forward PricewaterhouseCoopers in China. Members of the firm dance in the strangest manner, akin to the un-dance performed on the Fatboy Slim ‘Praise You’ music video. And as for the now infamous ‘Turbo Tax Rap contest’ also on YouTube, the best tax software rapper has won a cool $25,000.
Fight, fight, fight!
At a recent gathering of wise men discussing stewardship, Granby Oil & Gas finance director Nigel Burton expounded on the tragedy of the year-end report.
Burton related how, as FD of a company running the Financial Time’s Annual Report Service, they could determine the parts of reports people read when these were filed online, with viewers’ gaze focused squarely on directors’ remuneration.
When he then added that no-one looks at the rest of the accounting stuff in the annual report, the next speaker Peter Elwin, head of accounting & valuation, Cazenove Equities could contain himself no longer.
‘I should own up after that diatribe against accounting
standard-setters, to say that I have the proud position of being a
member of the UK’s ASB, so see you outside Nigel!’
Now now lads, no need to come to blows over a few pesky numbers.
Scam of the century?
SCAM. It’s a good name for a credit card fraud scheme hatched in an east London underground car park. It’s a stupid name for an online audit teaching software package.
This obvious fact, however, seems to have eluded the brilliant minds at ICAS and the Scottish Accountancy Trust for Education and Research who somehow (not even TS could drink enough to come up with this one) had an epiphany that SCAM would be the perfect title for, yes, a new online audit teaching software programme.
The software has created a virtual supermarket called SCAM plc.
Students are provided with various details of this ‘company’ and then
have to conduct an imaginary audit based on this information.
TS has to wonder whether the audit students will have to uncover some
kind of carousel fraud chain. Even though deliberate problems are in
the accounts for students to spot, the name is still the most bizarre
TS has come across.
Grant Thornton ups Budget stakes
TS has been slated for our coverage of the firms’ Budget mentions. Grant Thornton has complained that the firm should have been recorded as ‘first equal’ with KPMG in the Budget mentions the day after the big event, rather than second with 24 mentions to KPMG’s 28. Interestingly, the firm confirmed most of the rest of our numbers, which surprised us slightly as our methodology wasn’t exactly, ‘erm, watertight. GT went on to say that it thinks it pasted its rivals on the weekend coverage.
Separately, a Big Four source wrote to suggest we had been bribed by KPMG to write the story, an accusation we would like to now deny. TS takes all manner of other freebies from firms (keep ‘em coming), but is too incompetent to translate them into positive stories. Perhaps TS just needs more practice.
Colin goes green for 2007
Colin goes green for the Budget:
Click here to read about Colin's plans to go green after the Budget.
Chris Cox tells a funny
The atmosphere was rather tense when US Securities and Exchange chairman, Christopher Cox, stepped up to the podium to address the US Chamber of Commerce.
Here was the embodiment of the regulator, about to deliver a whipping to the body representing business. ‘Yes, it is unusual, at least in recent times, for the SEC chairman to be here, given that our two organisations have sometimes held an uneasy acquaintance,’ Cox said in acknowledgment of the strained relations between the two over US corporate scandals of recent years. And he continued: ‘Still, we’ve managed to maintain a cordial relationship, many of us on a first name basis. Defendant. Plaintiff. Appellant.’
The icy atmosphere warmed up as the house roared with laughter.
A shocking rate of inflation
You never quite know what will come up in conversation, although with the accounting community you can guess it will involve numbers or something sexual. One conversation recently involved both.
There TS was, chatting happily away with interactiveworld CFO Andy Fletcher when out of the blue he says, ‘Do you know how many blow-up dolls we sell?’
Interactive used to be part of the old Sunday Sport stable, still part owned by David Sullivan and connected, in some way, to shops that sell unmentionables like, er, blow-up dolls.
TS didn’t know but guessed the figures might be inflated. Then Andy revealed it was 26,000 or around 200 each year for each shop.
TS always thought there was a lot of hot air in the adult industry, but
not as much as that. Stunning. Andy’s a man who never likes to let his
audience down.
Apart from if you go to interactiveworld.com. No smut in sight.
Direct Waxation
TS has never been backward in coming forward when it comes to tearing a strip off the profession, so its refreshing to see that accountants are so in awe of the ‘Stock that they’ve started doing it themselves.
Staff at Maidstone-based firm DSH got the chance to bid to see one of their business services partners John Moore, Stephen Farrant, Mike Startup and Philip Wilson, having their legs waxed in front of them.
John Moore emerged as ‘winner’, but like many involved in the cut-throat world of business, he proved to have a shockingly high pain threshold resulting in the other contenders also having to put their legs on the line by a crowd baying for blood. Extra donations were made by the DSH team to see who would be the first to crack and burst into tears!
DSH said its ‘Wax the Partner’ raised £333, with an additional £123.91 from the company’s Red Nose dress down day and cake sale. TS trusts that all figures have been subjected to a thorough audit process.
Leigh flattened by tax talk
TS took a trip to think tank Politeia for lunch to hear Prof Deepak Lal make an argument for a flat tax. Here’s his thinking. Brits are too dependent on state handouts, which means the Treasury spends too much and the best solution is a flat tax.
August parliamentarian Edward Leigh, chairman of the Public Accountants Committee attended, though turned up late, and was eventually asked for his view. ‘I agree with everything Deepak said,’ he says, ‘and that’s why I have no influence at Westminster.’
He got a laugh, and TS has to admit he’s probably right after all, Gordon’s big government is unlikely to disappear any time soon. But if that means we can continue to hear Leigh dishing out verbals in PAC meetings, then that’s fine by TS.
Treasury struggle with Budget
Some would say that tax becomes ever more complicated,
making it harder and harder to understand precisely what is going on. Pah, says
the Treasury, what nonsense!
But the department itself had a bit of a blind spot during the Budget.
The headline cut in the corporation tax rate was not
extended to North Sea
When TS asked the Treasury about it, the response was along the lines of: ‘no, don’t think so, haven’t heard of that one.’ When the official duly checked, lo and behold, the story was true. So let’s not hear any of this nonsense about the tax system being simple and easy to understand, shall we?
