Law firm DWF raises £95m in first-ever main market legal listing March 11, 2019 Law firm DWF has today raised £95m in the first main market float for a law firm, valuing the business at £366m. DWF is by far the largest of the handful of law firms to have listed on the stock market and is the first firm with a large international footprint to have gone public. [...]
Interview: Rachel Reeves drags audit into the light November 13, 2018 Rachel Reeves doesn’t fit the typical mould of a select committee chair. Where her counterparts leverage their positions of parliamentary power to try to forcibly move their party’s position (see Nicky Morgan), or to launch populist crusades to fix society’s ills (see Damian Collins), Reeves has taken a less attention-seeking approach to the chair, and [...]
Raising the standard: The male business chiefs helping the drive for gender equality May 20, 2019 Not all business leaders are joining the battle for gender equality. As more women are being pushed up the corporate ladder and trained for senior roles, some male chief executive officers (CEOs) privately admit to feeling belittled, excluded and minimised. They complain that “you can’t say what you think anymore” and it’s “PC gone mad.” [...]
Auditors face fresh headache as shareholder adviser eyes industry October 18, 2018 The world’s largest adviser to shareholders is to ramp up its scrutiny of auditors, in a move that will pile further pressure on the UK’s embattled beancounters amid a series of industry controversies. Auditors will be facing another headache at their shareholder meetings next year after the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) today unveiled plans to [...]
Boris Johnson can deliver a bolder economic vision for Britain July 10, 2019 Brexit Britain is at an impasse. Half-in, half-out, with our politics gridlocked, we are now in serious danger of undermining our traditional attractiveness as a magnet for global investment. This week’s quarterly survey of FTSE CFOs by Deloitte shows that 83 per cent expect the UK’s economic prospects to worsen as a result of Brexit [...]
London’s audit giants are muscling in on law firms August 8, 2018 The City's top law firms are keeping a wary eye on the Big Four accountancy giants as the beancounters expand into the $600bn (£465bn) global legal services market. Managing partner of City law firm Fieldfisher Michael Chissick said: “They have very ambitious plans, that isn’t in doubt, audit is in decline and it is low [...]
Government refusal to extend pay gap reporting rules to Big Four branded ‘disappointing’ January 22, 2019 The government has been accused of letting the Big Four audit firms “evade reporting on their pay ratios” by excluding firms with their business model from new legislation. The government’s small business minister refused to say whether new rules on executive pay transparency would be extended to partnerships during a grilling by MPs today. Members [...]
Business secretary Greg Clark orders competition watchdog to carry out review of audit sector September 29, 2018 Business secretary Greg Clark has ordered the competition watchdog to carry out a sweeping review of the UK's audit sector. In a year when the Big Four audit firms have been hit by numerous scandals, Clark has told Andrew Tyrie, head of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to carry out the review into competition in [...]
Industry heavyweights from Barclays, RBS and Coutts back new personal investment robo-adviser Pia October 22, 2018 Big-name former executives from institutions such as Barclays, HSBC and Coutts are behind a new startup aiming to help consumers navigate the world of investing. Pia, an online "personal investment assistant" scheduled to begin its launch in summer, counts advisory board members such as T Rowe Price Global Investment Services' former chief executive Todd Ruppert, [...]
Audit watchdog boss Stephen Haddrill set to step down amid probe October 28, 2018 The chief executive of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), Stephen Haddrill, is reportedly preparing to step down amid a government probe into the watchdog’s operations. Haddrill is planning to leave within months, Sky News reported. He has led the FRC, which monitors and regulates the audit sector, since 2009. Citing an anonymous source, Sky said [...]