On Monday we welcomed our first ever gossip from mid-tier accounting firm Grant Thornton with allegations that an external auditor recently found evidence of number-fudging in the firm’s books.. We received the following email from an anonymous GT spy in response to that post on Tuesday:
The problems in GT go way back, the, in general, lacklustre partners prefer to choose mediocrity in leaders rather than stand up and say anything. You may be surprised to learn that some of their decisions were made by accountants. Take a closer look at their previous acquisition of a “new Melbourne” branch? It seemed that the GT leaders were so desperate for Melbourne to join that they quickly agreed to a deal that showed that the Melbournian firm could work with a negative working capital balance. It ended up costing a pretty penny and some were fleeced and keep on paying the price. But then again making quick bad decisions just is part of the GT culture.
We think the GT spy is talking about the 2008 merger between Grant Thornton and William Buck. The merger occurred in May 2008 – ie pre-GFC. Presumably the folks in GT advisory considered the rumoured negative working capital balance to be an acceptable transaction risk.
But are the GT partners personally guarateeing debts of over $1million each?
Meanwhile, across town at BDO, we received the following gossip from an anonymous BDO spy:
I know this person socially and recently heard from [name redacted] the BDO Brisbane COO who has been in the job for less than 6 months that he resigned from his job last week and has yet to secure a new position. I checked this (as we were out for a drink) and it appears BDO has wasted no time trying to fill his position, as it is currently being advertised on Seek. When pressed as to the reason he left his job so suddenly, he said he couldn’t stand the lies being told by a number of the senior Partners anymore. He said that he was particularly concerned that he had been asked by the senior partners to made certain statements to BDO staff regarding the reasons behind a number of recent staff departures (which he said were incorrect) and, as a result of the statements he had made, he was concerned that he would be dragged into a law suit the firm was currently embroiled in with a recently departed Partner.
Brisbanian Depature Ouch!
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I don’t have anything to add, I just want to see if BDO still pays people to vote down comments.