Tory donors warn Boris Johnson that tax rises will kill off economic recovery August 1, 2021 Prominent Tory donors have urged Boris Johnson not to implement tax rises this autumn as they fear it could hamper the post-Covid economic recovery. Johnson and Rishi Sunak are expected to soon announce a 1 per cent increase in National Insurance in a bid to fix gaps in the health and social care sectors. Sunak [...]
KPMG may rebuild restructuring arm one year after selling it for over £350m July 29, 2021 KPMG is reportedly creating a new division to advise on corporate restructurings, less than a year after it sold its UK insolvency advisory business for over £350m. The big four auditor made the move as a result of new competition laws which made achieving profits from its non-auditing services harder, according to the report in [...]
Gooooood morning Forty! Party time as Bitcoin breaches $40,000 July 28, 2021 The Bitcoin price is back up at around the $40k level this morning after dipping as low as $36k yesterday, as the markets continue to look volatile this week.
Watchdog slams KPMG for ‘unacceptable’ bank audits for third year running July 26, 2021 KPMG has been called out for failing to meet standards in its bank audits for the third year in a row, by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) in a review published on Friday, that found that a third of large company audits by the biggest UK firms failed to meet standards. The industry watchdog called [...]
FRC chair says slow board appointments pose “grave risk” to the watchdog reform July 26, 2021 The interim head of the Financial Reporting Council has said there is a “grave risk” that the slow pace of appointing board members could result in delays to the watchdog’s reformation plans. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC), which oversees the governance of the UK’s biggest listed companies, has been without a permanent chair since May [...]
Musk back in for Bitcoin? July 22, 2021 Having dipped briefly below $30,000 on Monday as the wider markets crashed, the Bitcoin price has rebounded back towards $32,000 today.
Should the regulator have the power to establish a standardised Code of Ethics for all the chartered accountancy bodies July 21, 2021 Loree Gourley, Chair of the ICAS Ethics Board, considers the BEIS consultation proposal for the regulator to have the power to establish and enforce a standardised Code of Ethics for all the chartered accountancy bodies. The BEIS consultation ‘Restoring trust in audit and corporate governance’ was published on 18 March 2021, with responses being due [...]
Fees rise as Big Four still dominate FTSE 100 audits market July 14, 2021 Long-standing plans to increase competition in the auditing market appear to have been delayed slightly longer, as the Big Four accounting firms continue to dominate. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the regulator for auditors, said that KPMG, EY, Deloitte and PwC audited all FTSE 100 companies in a roughly even four-way split. Government-backed reviews had [...]
How to build an ethical business July 12, 2021 The demand for businesses to be ethical is rising. But how can companies ensure that sustainability does not come at the cost of financial stability? Christian Koch investigates. This article was written before the coronavirus pandemic had escalated in the UK, Europe and the USA and first appears in the April 2020 issue of CA magazine. [...]
Brexit: Financial services will thrive on the world stage with access to rich foreign markets July 9, 2021 Something has changed in financial services. The events of the last week have put this beyond doubt. In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, we were focused on designing a deep and comprehensive relationship with the EU based on alignment. When that was rejected, we hoped for the significantly less comprehensive equivalence determinations. As the [...]