Garpal Gumnut
Ross Island Hotel
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PwC
- Thread starter Garpal Gumnut
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Dona Ferentes
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they say
... not sure this solves anything. These clowns will reinvent themselves, Hydra like. When PwC took over a local accountancy firm, there was a hiving off, with the planning/ advice side going out on its own and them keeping the audit clients. Chinese walls not good enough. But hubris intruded.
ASIC looks to ban Peter Collins and PwC partners
ASIC is investigating whether it should ban PwC former head of international tax Peter Collins, from the financial services industry.... not sure this solves anything. These clowns will reinvent themselves, Hydra like. When PwC took over a local accountancy firm, there was a hiving off, with the planning/ advice side going out on its own and them keeping the audit clients. Chinese walls not good enough. But hubris intruded.
Dona Ferentes
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"A fish rots from the head"
In an email to staff, acting CEO Kristin Stubbins apologised “for the situation we currently find ourselves in, and for what you’re all experiencing as a result”.
“I know it’s been hard to see the firm we love go through this, and for you to answer questions you’ve been asked about the matter by friends and family,” she wrote.
“As you know, we’ve been undertaking an investigation into the wrongdoing related to the handling of confidential Treasury information and past failures in wider governance responsibilities.
“Today, I want to share that we have reached conclusions in the investigation and the partners named below either failed to uphold the firm’s professional and ethical standards in relation to confidential government information, or failed in their leadership and governance roles.
“The partners who have exited, or who are being exited, from the partnership are: Richard Gregg, Peter Konidaris, Eddy Moussa, Pete Calleja, Sean Gregory, Wayne Plummer, Tom Seymour, and Peter van Dongen.”
“The behaviours of this group are not acceptable under PwC’s standards."
.... and one way to smash the patriarchy.
In an email to staff, acting CEO Kristin Stubbins apologised “for the situation we currently find ourselves in, and for what you’re all experiencing as a result”.
“I know it’s been hard to see the firm we love go through this, and for you to answer questions you’ve been asked about the matter by friends and family,” she wrote.
“As you know, we’ve been undertaking an investigation into the wrongdoing related to the handling of confidential Treasury information and past failures in wider governance responsibilities.
“Today, I want to share that we have reached conclusions in the investigation and the partners named below either failed to uphold the firm’s professional and ethical standards in relation to confidential government information, or failed in their leadership and governance roles.
“The partners who have exited, or who are being exited, from the partnership are: Richard Gregg, Peter Konidaris, Eddy Moussa, Pete Calleja, Sean Gregory, Wayne Plummer, Tom Seymour, and Peter van Dongen.”
“The behaviours of this group are not acceptable under PwC’s standards."
.... and one way to smash the patriarchy.
Dona Ferentes
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Private equity investor Allegro Funds has bought PwC’s government consulting arm* for $1 and will invest $100 million in the newly renamed Scyne Advisory. The move is part of a risky and ambitious plan to reshape the industry** by creating a huge advisory outfit that consults only to public sector clients***.
Scyne, an Old English word with various meanings including beautiful, fair and bright, officially began operating at the start of the month on Saturday with 132 former PwC partners and about 1750 staff from the embattled big four consulting firm.
“Scyne Advisory will have an industry-leading governance model****," said Allegro co-founder Adrian Loader.
*The naughty bit
**herein is the problem; it's an industry not a profession
***your tax dollars
****not a high bar
Scyne, an Old English word with various meanings including beautiful, fair and bright, officially began operating at the start of the month on Saturday with 132 former PwC partners and about 1750 staff from the embattled big four consulting firm.
“Scyne Advisory will have an industry-leading governance model****," said Allegro co-founder Adrian Loader.
*The naughty bit
**herein is the problem; it's an industry not a profession
***your tax dollars
****not a high bar
Knobby22
Mmmmmm 2nd breakfast
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PWC yesterday sacked 8 partners. That is a big deal.
How come it isn't being reported on Sky News? Very strange.
How come it isn't being reported on Sky News? Very strange.
Dona Ferentes
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Knobby22
Mmmmmm 2nd breakfast
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All these companies. PWC, KPMG, etc. are deeply weaved into the public service and political class.
PWC has tentacles everywhere.
PwC has 'tentacles everywhere', senator tells hearing
The sheer size of PwC and the $250 million in government contracts it has already won this year makes this investigation far from ordinary.
thenewdaily.com.au
Knobby22
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And Morrison was famously going to work for PWC until he got rejected at the last minute as things went awry.
What do he do to get their largesse?
www.afr.com
I can tell you that the I personally missed out on an engineering project that somehow went to KPMG despite they not being an engineering firm and costing more.
What do he do to get their largesse?
PwC’s $11m vaccine contract mistakenly kept secret
The deal for management support of the delayed vaccine rollout should have been made public at the start of 2021.
I can tell you that the I personally missed out on an engineering project that somehow went to KPMG despite they not being an engineering firm and costing more.
Dona Ferentes
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Joe Aston summarising it for me.
Joe Aston Columnist Aug 8, 2023
Well, well, well, the Sergeant Schultz defence of former PwC chief executive Luke Sayers has disintegrated upon impact with the first available piece of verifiable information....
Late on Monday, the Senate Economics Committee released a “comprehensive timeline of events relevant to the PwC matter” produced by the Australian Taxation Office in response to a question on notice from Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill.
The ATO’s timeline revealed that second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn met with Sayers on August 29, 2019 to discuss, among other things, the ATO’s “concerns related to PwC conduct” including the firm’s potential criminal non-compliance with formal notices to produce information by making false claims of legal professional privilege.
In that meeting, Hirschhorn specifically “suggested to [Sayers that he] personally review the internal emails” that PwC had surrendered to the ATO two years earlier. This was a similar cache of emails to the one sensationally published by the Senate in May this year.
Sayers’ sole account up to this point was his June 21 statement that he “was not aware of the confidentiality issues that have since emerged within the international tax practice at PwC”.
On Tuesday, Sayers released a longer statement confirming that “During my tenure as CEO … I and other representatives of PwC met with the ATO to discuss a number of issues relating to aggressive tax practices, promoter penalties and claims of legal professional privilege on behalf of clients of PwC” but that “I did not personally review the tens of thousands of documents and emails which PwC provided to the ATO as part of these processes, nor do I recall that being suggested to me by the ATO”.
This is Sayers throwing up the busy man defence, giving off an impression of cooperation. I met with lots of people, but none of them have names so you can’t cross-check their recollections. There were thousands of documents. I don’t recall. I was dealing with numerous issues.
Remember, this wasn’t some dandruffy old cardigan from accounts payable. This was the second commissioner of taxation dragging you into an explicit meeting to say this is serious, pal. Read the goddamn emails.
It says so much about Sayers’ seriously impaired risk perception...
Luke Sayers is not reading the room
Sayers doesn’t think he’s done a single thing wrong. This is all just another level in the video game of his professional climbing.Joe Aston Columnist Aug 8, 2023
Well, well, well, the Sergeant Schultz defence of former PwC chief executive Luke Sayers has disintegrated upon impact with the first available piece of verifiable information....
Late on Monday, the Senate Economics Committee released a “comprehensive timeline of events relevant to the PwC matter” produced by the Australian Taxation Office in response to a question on notice from Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill.
The ATO’s timeline revealed that second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn met with Sayers on August 29, 2019 to discuss, among other things, the ATO’s “concerns related to PwC conduct” including the firm’s potential criminal non-compliance with formal notices to produce information by making false claims of legal professional privilege.
In that meeting, Hirschhorn specifically “suggested to [Sayers that he] personally review the internal emails” that PwC had surrendered to the ATO two years earlier. This was a similar cache of emails to the one sensationally published by the Senate in May this year.
Sayers’ sole account up to this point was his June 21 statement that he “was not aware of the confidentiality issues that have since emerged within the international tax practice at PwC”.
On Tuesday, Sayers released a longer statement confirming that “During my tenure as CEO … I and other representatives of PwC met with the ATO to discuss a number of issues relating to aggressive tax practices, promoter penalties and claims of legal professional privilege on behalf of clients of PwC” but that “I did not personally review the tens of thousands of documents and emails which PwC provided to the ATO as part of these processes, nor do I recall that being suggested to me by the ATO”.
This is Sayers throwing up the busy man defence, giving off an impression of cooperation. I met with lots of people, but none of them have names so you can’t cross-check their recollections. There were thousands of documents. I don’t recall. I was dealing with numerous issues.
‘This is serious, pal’
Oh Lukey, who said anything about tens of thousands of documents? The ATO suggested you read something like 144 pages of emails, which half of Australia devoured in one afternoon three months ago. The general population read them for free. It was literally your job to read them – you were only paid $4.5 million that year – and you still didn’t.Remember, this wasn’t some dandruffy old cardigan from accounts payable. This was the second commissioner of taxation dragging you into an explicit meeting to say this is serious, pal. Read the goddamn emails.
It says so much about Sayers’ seriously impaired risk perception...
Dona Ferentes
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the handwringing and gnashing of teeth continues. Today's story:
.
Shadow’ culture of profit first blamed for PwC tax leaks scandal
A scathing report into PwC Australia has blamed a ‘shadow’ culture which tolerated bad behaviour in the pursuit of profit “growth at all costs”, and lack of governance practices that “went unexamined and uncorrected for many years” for the firm’s tax leaks scandal..
when, as been reported, a significant number of partners earn $1.3 million p.a., then I'd suggest any grip on reality has long evaporated and it's a free-for-all , snouts to the trough. Hubris, gotta love how it plays.
Dona Ferentes
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this could have gone in the Political Satire thread, but that's been sanitised by bas.
.
Has outsourcing public service matters fallen out of favour and should the federal government pivot for a quick win? That is the question for a new batch of external advisers.
by James Schloeffel
...
The Federal Government is seeking the services of a suitably qualified consultancy to advise on whether the government overuses the services of consultancies.
1. Background
The Federal Government spent $43 billion on external consultants in the financial year 2022-23 (according to figures prepared on behalf of the government by KPMG). This represents a 215 per cent increase in spending on consultants since 2011 (based on a report prepared for the government by EY).
While $43 billion may seem like an extraordinary amount of money, we all know that getting a bunch of grads together with some Post-it notes, a whiteboard and 10 boxes of pizza for an “agile, blue sky ideation session” on the future of Australia’s social services sector doesn’t pay for itself.
That said, given the recent media coverage of PwC’s use of confidential tax information (as summarised by Accenture – see Appendix A), as well as the increased cost-of-living pressures being experienced by ordinary Australians (outlined in the BCG Cost-of-Living Report, Appendix B), we are starting to sense that the advice to slowly replace the entire public service with outside advisers (McKinsey & Co Strategic Paper, 2019, Appendix C) may have been misguided.
While a recent research project by Bain found that Australians are positive about the government’s use of consultancies, a series of focus groups, conducted on behalf of the government by Deloitte, detected some very slight levels of negativity. (The 725-page report, “Are you f---ing serious?”: Community responses to government spending on consultants, can be found in Appendix D.)
Due to a lack of resources within the public service, we now require an external party to provide an integrated, 360-degree, solutions-focused deep-dive to close the loop on strategic deliverables moving forward (translation: please tell us what to do next).
2. Key deliverables
The successful consultancy will be required to:
a) Determine whether $43 billion is, in fact, a lot of money
b) Provide a recommendation for the optimum level of government consulting work in the future (eg “the same”, “more”, “a lot more” etc)
c) Pad it out in a 400-page PowerPoint with a meaningless-but-impressive-sounding title such as “Driving efficiency dividends in a climate of escalating citizen expectations”.
You may also wish to include an additional costed proposal for fixing the ****-ups that will inevitably arise from your original recommendations.
3. Evaluation criteria
Prospective consultancies will be judged on their knowledge of government consulting and the consulting profession. Also, if you have any details on the government’s taxation policy that you could share with us, that would be a massive bonus. The only guy with the log-in password was from PwC and he’s now on indefinite leave.
4. Budget
We will consider proposals up to $200 million + materials. Up to $300 million if your proposal includes a senior partner briefly sitting in on a meeting and saying the word “synergies”.
5. Mandatory requirements
A set of “company values” that includes the terms Integrity, Trust and Honesty.
6. Optional requirements
A Conflicts of Interest assessment.
Please submit your proposal to our tender management team, currently being run on behalf of the government by our consulting partner PwC. They promise they won’t share it with anyone.
.
Has outsourcing public service matters fallen out of favour and should the federal government pivot for a quick win? That is the question for a new batch of external advisers.
by James Schloeffel
...
Tender Notice
Request for tender for the provision of consulting servicesThe Federal Government is seeking the services of a suitably qualified consultancy to advise on whether the government overuses the services of consultancies.
1. Background
The Federal Government spent $43 billion on external consultants in the financial year 2022-23 (according to figures prepared on behalf of the government by KPMG). This represents a 215 per cent increase in spending on consultants since 2011 (based on a report prepared for the government by EY).
While $43 billion may seem like an extraordinary amount of money, we all know that getting a bunch of grads together with some Post-it notes, a whiteboard and 10 boxes of pizza for an “agile, blue sky ideation session” on the future of Australia’s social services sector doesn’t pay for itself.
That said, given the recent media coverage of PwC’s use of confidential tax information (as summarised by Accenture – see Appendix A), as well as the increased cost-of-living pressures being experienced by ordinary Australians (outlined in the BCG Cost-of-Living Report, Appendix B), we are starting to sense that the advice to slowly replace the entire public service with outside advisers (McKinsey & Co Strategic Paper, 2019, Appendix C) may have been misguided.
While a recent research project by Bain found that Australians are positive about the government’s use of consultancies, a series of focus groups, conducted on behalf of the government by Deloitte, detected some very slight levels of negativity. (The 725-page report, “Are you f---ing serious?”: Community responses to government spending on consultants, can be found in Appendix D.)
Due to a lack of resources within the public service, we now require an external party to provide an integrated, 360-degree, solutions-focused deep-dive to close the loop on strategic deliverables moving forward (translation: please tell us what to do next).
2. Key deliverables
The successful consultancy will be required to:
a) Determine whether $43 billion is, in fact, a lot of money
b) Provide a recommendation for the optimum level of government consulting work in the future (eg “the same”, “more”, “a lot more” etc)
c) Pad it out in a 400-page PowerPoint with a meaningless-but-impressive-sounding title such as “Driving efficiency dividends in a climate of escalating citizen expectations”.
You may also wish to include an additional costed proposal for fixing the ****-ups that will inevitably arise from your original recommendations.
3. Evaluation criteria
Prospective consultancies will be judged on their knowledge of government consulting and the consulting profession. Also, if you have any details on the government’s taxation policy that you could share with us, that would be a massive bonus. The only guy with the log-in password was from PwC and he’s now on indefinite leave.
4. Budget
We will consider proposals up to $200 million + materials. Up to $300 million if your proposal includes a senior partner briefly sitting in on a meeting and saying the word “synergies”.
5. Mandatory requirements
A set of “company values” that includes the terms Integrity, Trust and Honesty.
6. Optional requirements
A Conflicts of Interest assessment.
Please submit your proposal to our tender management team, currently being run on behalf of the government by our consulting partner PwC. They promise they won’t share it with anyone.
- James Schloeffel is founder of The Shovel and Wankernomics.com – an important new resource for corporate Australia
Dona Ferentes
A little bit OC⚡DC
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says it all. whores.
.
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Emails show PwC helped Russians dodge sanctions
Leaked documents reveal how accounting giant PwC’s Cyprus arm scrambled to help Russian oligarchs stay ahead of sanctions in the days after the Ukraine invasion
Dona Ferentes
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Former PwC chief executive Luke Sayers was explicitly warned in early 2020 that the firm’s tax division was potentially committing false and misleading conduct over incorrect legal professional privilege claims.
Mr Sayers was also warned that allowing Tom Seymour, the former head of the tax division, to become the next CEO could cause problems for the firm.
The fresh revelations in the firm’s long-running tax leaks saga emerged on Friday with the release by parliament of a contemporaneous note by PwC’s former general counsel Meredith Beattie..
The note relates to a meeting between ATO second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn and Mr Sayers in February 2020. At that time, Mr Hirschhorn said the “culture in the tax business is terrible”, that two partners within the division were “incompetent and breaching ethical standards”, and that the firm’s personnel had tried to blame clients and its own law firm for repeatedly failing to provide documents requested by the agency.
The details of the almost two-hour meeting between the men contradicted earlier evidence provided by Mr Sayers about what he knew at the time. They also illustrate how the firm’s leadership repeatedly failed to address issues that culminated in the disastrous scandal.
.
set KPIs short term, pay yrself the bonus, and run for the hills
Mr Sayers was also warned that allowing Tom Seymour, the former head of the tax division, to become the next CEO could cause problems for the firm.
The fresh revelations in the firm’s long-running tax leaks saga emerged on Friday with the release by parliament of a contemporaneous note by PwC’s former general counsel Meredith Beattie..
The note relates to a meeting between ATO second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn and Mr Sayers in February 2020. At that time, Mr Hirschhorn said the “culture in the tax business is terrible”, that two partners within the division were “incompetent and breaching ethical standards”, and that the firm’s personnel had tried to blame clients and its own law firm for repeatedly failing to provide documents requested by the agency.
The details of the almost two-hour meeting between the men contradicted earlier evidence provided by Mr Sayers about what he knew at the time. They also illustrate how the firm’s leadership repeatedly failed to address issues that culminated in the disastrous scandal.
.
set KPIs short term, pay yrself the bonus, and run for the hills
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