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☆ How best to invest in AI: What leading Wall Street firms and analysts are saying as the rally continues
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Marley Jay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Experts at BofA and UBS recently wrote about their approaches for investing in the theme. Tech analyst Dan Ives doubled his price target on AI pure play C3.AI, which has soared almost 150%. One of the market's splashiest artificial intelligence newcomers is here to stay, says Wedbush tech stock analyst Dan Ives. On Friday Ives boosted his price target on AI software company C3.AI from $13 per share all the way to $24. "The company continues to experience increased demand for its AI solutions that are designed to increase a range of applications across industries fueling tailwinds in the market," Ives wrote.

☆ Accountants Have to Go to College for Five Years. Minnesota Is Rethinking That.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Lindsay Ellis | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

PricewaterhouseCoopers and Saint Peter’s University are testing a pilot program that substitutes a year of work for the traditional fifth year of college coursework. Accounting, a profession focused on numbers, is vexed by this one: the 150 college credit hours required to become a certified public accountant. The shortage of accountants in the U.S. has firms boosting salaries and sending work abroad. The cost of accounting work has been rising and some firms are turning away audit work because they can’t find enough CPAs. Efforts to recruit more students into the field have become a near-constant conversation now nationwide among CPAs and industry groups.

☆ The unraveling of fintech darling Vise
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +28 min

It was April, and more than two dozen salespeople who worked for the fintech startup Vise had been ordered to a multiday off-site at the W Hoboken hotel in New Jersey to share exhaustive reports on their performance. Even salespeople at bigger, established, top-tier investment-management firms typically wouldn't close $250 million in a year, multiple sales employees said. (K-means clustering is an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm often referred to as a form of AI, Vise's founders said). (Vise's founders disputed this, saying the company received updated financial data only once a day for its portfolio-construction engine.) And to address its "leaky funnel" of overestimating prospective sales, Vise was to stop outreach to new clients while it onboards and upsells to existing clients, the document said.

☆ Ginni Rometty Learned How to Use ‘Good Power’
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Emily Bobrow | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Virginia “Ginni” Rometty emerged as a strong contender to run International Business Machines Corp. after she successfully led the company’s merger with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s consulting arm in 2003. When months went by without hitting her profit targets, Ms. Rometty knew she needed to turn things around. What didn’t help, she says, was hearing from a superior that if she failed she was “no longer a welcome member of the family.”“Some of the biggest lessons I learned about power were about how not to lead,” Ms. Rometty, 65, said over video from her home in Naples, Fla. Since retiring as IBM’s chairman and CEO in 2020, after nearly a decade in the job and a lifetime at the company, she says she has been thinking a lot about how power is wielded and abused. “Given the many negative stories about leaders in politics and business, people now associate power with fear, with being uncomfortable,” she says.

☆ KPMG becomes first Big Four accounting firm to cut staff in U.S. - FT
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Several financial firms have slashed jobs in recent months including major Wall Street banks, asset managers and fintechs amid a turbulent macroeconomic environment that has pressured consumers and soured demand in several mainstay business units. The cuts at KPMG will affect close to 700 people, the FT report added. However, we have experienced prolonged uncertainty affecting certain parts of our Advisory business that drove outsized growth in recent years," a spokesperson for KPMG said in an emailed statement to Reuters. The Big Four accounting firms comprise of EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Granth Vanaik; Editing by Shailesh KuberOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Tax Season Is Coming, and These Firms Can’t Find Enough Accountants in the U.S.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Lindsay Ellis | Photographs Levi Mandel For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A national shortage of accountants is prompting small and midsize firms to hire overseas for the first time as they seek workers to audit U.S. companies’ books and prepare Americans’ tax returns. Large firms such as KPMG LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP have long hired international accountants to support client work. Now, with tax season poised to kick off, small and midsize accounting outfits that serve family businesses, individuals and smaller companies say they are offshoring jobs as local recruiting pipelines dry up and accountants leave the profession in droves.

With 73% of chief executives around the world expecting global economic growth to decline over the next 12 months, this gloomy view is the most pessimistic CEOs have been since PwC began the survey more than a decade ago, it said on Monday. The survey also found that companies are cutting costs, even as many do not plan to reduce headcount or compensation in the fight to retain talent. Separately, two-thirds of private and public sector chief economists surveyed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) expect a global recession in 2023. Other highlights from the PwC survey include:- Half the CEOs reported reducing operating costs, 51% said they were raising prices, and 48% were diversifying product and service offerings. - Climate risk did not feature as prominently as a short-term risk over the next 12 months relative to other global risks.

☆ China Evergrande's auditor quits on disagreement around 2021 audit-related matters
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Jan 16 (Reuters) - Embattled property developer China Evergrande (3333.HK) on Monday said that its current auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), has resigned as the parties disagreed over the timeline and scope of work surrounding the firm's status as a going concern and other audit-related matters for fiscal 2021. Once China's top-selling developer, Evergrande is now at the centre of the country's property crisis. Its $22.7 billion of offshore debt, including loans and private bonds, is deemed to be in default after it missed payments late last year. In its resignation letter, PwC noted that it had not received information on certain material matters surrounding the group's consolidated financial statements for the year 2021. Last week Reuters reported, citing sources, that the developer will hold a meeting with dollar bondholders to discuss its debt restructuring proposals.

☆ I manage a Davos hotel where Bill Gates and other leaders stay for the World Economic Forum. We barely sleep and live off Red Bull, but we love it.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( Natalie Rahhal | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Hans-Rudolf Ruetti manages the Grandhotel Belvédère, where the most important WEF participants stay. For more than 50 years, what's now known as the World Economic Forum (WEF) has taken place in Davos, and every year, the Grandhotel Belvédère has hosted WEF guests. There are several events being put on by important guests, and this is always a challenging task when it comes to safety and security. We also built an additional three kitchens from where we can deliver food exclusively for hotel guests and events hosted here by the forum participants. There really isn't anything we at the hotel don't like about the WEF.

Either way, it does look like Q4 GDP, as well as December retail sales, investment and industrial production data will confirm the world's second-largest economy ended last year on an extremely weak footing. GDP is expected to contract 0.8% from Q3, giving annual growth of just 1.8% in the October-December period. Retail sales are expected to have fallen 8.6%. chartEconomists polled by Reuters reckon China's economy grew 2.8% last year overall, and will rebound to 4.9% this year. House price data on Monday showed the sector continued to weaken into December as new COVID-19 outbreaks hit demand.

☆ Employees at an Indian sports tech startup face a $1,200 fine if they contact staff who are on vacation
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

India's Dream Sports requires its employees to take a week off and "unplug" every year. Any employee who contacts vacationing staff faces a $1,200 fine. Like other companies with vacation benefits, Dream Sports wants staff to take time off work — even amid a labor shortage. And if anyone contacts staff during their time off, they would be fined about $1,200, said Harsh Jain, Dream Sports co-founder and CEO. In the same month, Goldman Sachs implemented a scheme that allows senior bankers to take an unlimited number of vacation days.

☆ EY Hires Cargill CFO to Manage Finances of Consulting Spinoff
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Mark Maurer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

Ernst & Young recruited Jamie Miller, the departing chief financial officer of Cargill Inc., to lead the finances of its consulting arm, which the Big Four accounting firm is spinning off. Cargill on Monday said Ms. Miller plans to step down from the Minnesota-based agricultural company on Friday. To carry out the split, EY is looking to raise roughly $11 billion in equity and $18 billion in debt. The new consulting firm could struggle to establish itself amid strong competition and a slowing economy, researchers have said. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CFO Journal The Morning Ledger provides daily news and insights on corporate finance from the CFO Journal team.

☆ A couple in their 20s who turned a side hustle into a business that brings in up to $19,000 a month share the 3 strategies they used to increase their income
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-17 | by ( Kathleen Elkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Entrepreneurs Steph Gordon and Den Mathu have managed to increase their income consistently. Start by with your current job: Can you negotiate a raise or land a higher salary with a different company? He and Gordon started their joint side hustle, which has evolved into a full-time business, in 2019. Mathu was working as a consultant at Deloitte, while Gordon was working in HR at PricewaterhouseCoopers. That way, they'll have more time and energy to spend on growing their company and revenue streams even more.

☆ A couple in their 20s quit their 'Big 4' accounting jobs and now earn up to $19,000 a month creating online content. They explain how they turned a side hustle into a lucrative business that is helpin
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Kathleen Elkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

They quit their corporate jobs and now make up to $19,000 a month creating personal finance content. The Toronto-based couple worked their way up to saving and investing about 60% of their income, they told Insider. It's been about a year since Gordon and Mathu left the corporate world to go all-in on content creation. In 2022, the couple earned up to $26,000 CAD (about $19,000 USD) a month, according to documents viewed by Insider. They honed in on personal finance, covering topics like saving, investing, increasing your income, and paying down debt.

☆ Stock delisting risks averted as US gains access to audit papers of Chinese tech companies
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Laura He | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

The announcement marks a major breakthrough in a yearslong standoff over how Chinese companies listed on Wall Street should be regulated. There are more than 260 Chinese companies listed on US stock exchanges, with a combined market capitalization of more than $770 billion, according to recent calculations posted by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The United States had increased pressure by passing a law in December 2020 requiring Chinese companies listed in the US to open their books to audit watchdogs. In Friday’s statement, the PCAOB said it had inspected the audits of eight Chinese companies completed by KPMG Huazhen LLP in China and PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong. She added that the watchdog is continuing to demand complete access in mainland China and Hong Kong moving forward.

"This falls into the category of a game changing view of Chinese companies because the threat of their delisting seems to have been eliminated," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Financial. However, the relief was not seen in Thursday's trading for U.S.-listed shares of Chinese companies, which were higher amid the news, but gave up gains and some ended sharply lower. Washington and Beijing reached a landmark deal in August to settle a long-running dispute over auditing compliance of U.S.-listed Chinese firms. Authorities in China have long been reluctant to let overseas regulators inspect local accounting firms, citing national security concerns. U.S. lawmakers in 2020 agreed to legislation that would oust Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges unless they adhere to American auditing standards.

The announcement from the U.S. accounting watchdog removes the risk that around 200 Chinese companies, including Alibaba (BABA.N), could be kicked off U.S. stock exchanges. "This falls into the category of a game changing view of Chinese companies because the threat of their delisting seems to have been eliminated." Washington and Beijing reached a landmark deal in August to settle a long-running dispute over auditing compliance of U.S.-listed Chinese firms. Authorities in China have long been reluctant to let overseas regulators inspect local accounting firms, citing national security concerns. U.S. lawmakers in 2020 agreed to legislation that would oust Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges unless they adhere to American auditing standards.

☆ Delisting risk eases for Alibaba and other US-listed Chinese companies after American officials get audit access
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Carla Mozée | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Alibaba and other US-listed Chinese firms face a lower risk of delisting after officials got access to audit data. Inspectors conducted on-site work in Hong Kong but have yet to gain access to mainland China. The work lessens the potential that roughly 200 Chinese companies will be booted from American exchanges. Chinese officials have cited national security concerns for shutting down inspection demands. The watchdog said it's continuing to demand complete access in mainland China and Hong Kong and is already planning for regular inspections starting in early 2023.

☆ GCAP: Japan, Britain and Italy team up to build sixth-generation fighter jet
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Brad Lendon | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

It will showcase technologies from each of the three partners, the British statement said. All three countries are part of the US fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighter program, under which all three fly the F-35 and versions of the warplane are assembled in Italy and Japan. The US also has a sixth-generation fighter jet – known as the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program – in the works. It is designed to be the successor to its F-22, which along with the F-35, is considered the world’s top fighter jet. “The Air Force intends for NGAD to replace the F-22 fighter jet beginning in 2030, possibly including a combination of crewed and uncrewed aircraft,” a US Congressional Research document says.

☆ U.S. watchdog levies $7.7 mln in fines against KPMG entities
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Chris Prentice | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Dec 6 (Reuters) - A U.S. agency tasked with overseeing the audits of public companies on Tuesday said it imposed $7.7 million in fines and sanctioned three firms across KPMG's global network for violations of professional auditing standards, quality control standards and other rules. The companies are all member firms of KPMG, known as one of the "Big Four" accounting firms, which also include Deloitte & Touche LLP, Ernst & Young LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Larry Bradley, global head of audit at KPMG, acknowledged the PCAOB's findings and said the firm "remains committed globally to the highest standards of quality and integrity." The PCAOB also barred or suspended four KPMG auditors from participating in public company audits. Reporting by Chris Prentice; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Aurora Ellis and Leslie AdlerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ U.K. Tax Change to Yield Higher Costs, But Much-Needed Certainty For Companies
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Jennifer Williams-Alvarez | Nina Trentmann | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

Now, under a new prime minister, the government is pledging fiscal austerity, accompanied by an increase in the corporate tax rate to 25%. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesWith the latest change, the corporate tax rate has flip-flopped four times in less than a year. The tax increase, from the current rate of 19%, will apply to companies with annual profit of more than £250,000, equivalent to more than $307,000. We know it is increasing to 25%.”The U.K. government’s change brings the corporate tax rate in line with those of other large economies. Photo: Jason Alden/Bloomberg NewsU.K. companies’ costs are rising on multiple fronts.

☆ U.K. Tax Change to Yield Higher Costs, but Much-Needed Certainty for Companies
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-04 | by ( Jennifer Williams-Alvarez | Nina Trentmann | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

☆ Job Postings With Broad Pay Ranges Leave Applicants Guessing in NYC
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Theo Francis | Chip Cutter | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

As companies publish pay details for job openings under new laws in New York City, some are listing maximum pay figures that are more than double the minimum pay for the job, stretching salary ranges to hundreds of thousands of dollars for certain careers. A trauma surgeon in the Mount Sinai Health System could earn anywhere from $384,000 to $800,000 or more, the hospital’s job ads say. A tax executive at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP could make $158,400—or nearly triple that. At AT&T Inc., a principal cloud architect could be paid $206,000 or $103,000.

☆ High rates and inflation are here to stay, says PwC's real estate practice leader. Here's what it means for major metro areas, and why cities will need to be completely reimagined in the next great ho
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Lisa Kailai Han | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

High inflation and interest rates are here to stay in 2023, said PwC's Byron Carlock. To the dismay of real estate investors everywhere, Byron Carlock says that higher interest rates are here to stay for 2023. And while housing input prices and the costs of raw materials have begun to moderate, he doesn't believe that these can completely offset the ongoing increase in interest rates. But there's also a few obstacles in the way of reimagining entire cities, Carlock. "Cities are going to have to step up their game with respect to zoning and entitlement processes," he added.

☆ Hungary picks PwC partner to lead new anti-graft body overseeing EU funds
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BUDAPEST, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Hungary's State Audit Office has picked PricewaterhouseCoopers forensic partner Ferenc Biro to lead a new anti-graft body to be launched by mid-November as part of efforts to regain access to European Union funds locked up over corruption risks. Nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government has been locked in battles with Brussels over corruption, migration, LGBTQ rights and democratic standards. The body, to be launched by Nov. 19, will be tasked with reinforcing the prevention, detection and correction of fraud, conflicts of interest and corruption. It will have extensive powers such as instructing contracting authorities to suspend a procurement procedure and requesting probes. ($1 = 1.0229 euros)Reporting by Gergely Szakacs Editing by Mark PotterOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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