Bulking up at the bigs Baril says Deloitte has made about 18 acquisitions of firms since 2013, only five of which involved audit practices. The mergers with audit practices have taken place primarily in Toronto, Quebec City, Laval and Winnipeg.

Beyond the financial details, both accounting firms are building on recent success. TORONTO, Feb. 26, 2021 – The acquisition by homegrown accounting firm MNP of 26 Deloitte Canada offices, located mostly in Quebec, has caused a great deal of speculation as to the significance of the deal. Deloitte Canada issued a “clarification” in the ...

The survey finds a growing shift overall to higher annual technology budgets. Seven per cent more firms (including sole practitioners) have increased their budget in the past year (2018: 16.9%, 2017: 23.7%) to the $2,500 to $5,000 range. A whopping 26 per cent more of the survey’s respondents report raising their budget above $5,000.

Consulting split would address independence issues of audit regulators. Srivastava believes EY had no choice but to announce its intention to split into two companies. “No company makes decisions in a vacuum,” he says, noting that he believes that regulators in the United States and United Kingdom were the likely forces behind this decision.

At Andersen Tax LLP in Vancouver, a couple of months before the shutdown in January 2020, the firm gave its staff the option of WFH two days a week so long as they had the proper set-up for high-speed Internet, at least two monitors, and data security. “We’ve accelerated that now,” says Steven Flynn, a partner with Andersen Tax.

Three of the Big Four post the same elite AAA+ brand rating as Ferrari. According to the report, Deloitte is the 46th most valuable brand in the world, tops amongst accounting firms, up from 57th in 2018, with a Brand Strength Index (BSI) score of 91.2 (brand value US$29.6 billion). Deloitte pulled ahead of last year’s sector leader, PwC ...

Intuit, which makes Xero competitor Quickbooks, loaned US$933M to small businesses in FY 2022, up substantially from US$232M in FY 2021, according to Debanked. In 2020, Xero acquired a small business financing platform called Waddle, which it is now exiting at the cost of a significant writedown.

Capital markets will open up such new opportunities. Sustainable finance will remove us from the day-to-day accelerating treadmill, which is exhausting business and eroding the health of the planet. The time has come to leave the past behind and transition to a new economy that seeks long-term prosperity for all Canadians.

As reported by the WSJ, the bulk of the Big Four’s revenue now comes from consulting and advisory: $56 billion last year, compared to only $47 billion from auditing. ... “Not everyone agrees that quality is going up, however, with the UK’s Financial Reporting Council [FRC] providing a powerful dissenting voice,” according to the report. ...

Seventy-five per cent of that large consulting pie is sliced for the big players. 2018 was another very good year for the consulting arms of accounting firms — dominated by the Big Four — which grew faster than the overall market (up 6.5 per cent to 1.55 billion) and faster than any other firm type.