Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: It’s Not Just You, People Really Are Getting Dumber; EY Partners Getting the Axe | 3.17.25

Morning, people. 29 days to go until April 15.

Got some bad news. We are, in fact, getting dumber:

Though there has been a demonstrably steep decline in cognitive skills since the COVID-19 pandemic due to the educational disruption it presented, these trends have been in evidence since at least the mid-2010s, suggesting that whatever is going on runs much deeper and has lasted far longer than the pandemic.

Obviously, there’s no single answer as to why people seem to be struggling with cognitive skills, but one key indicator is the sharp decline in reading and the world’s changing relationship to the way we consume information and media. In 2022, for example, the National Endowment for the Arts found that just 37.6 percent of Americans said they’d read a novel or short story in the year prior — a share down from 41.5 percent in 2017 and 45.2 percent in 2012.

If anyone wanting to exercise their brain is looking for a book to read, check this out. Thanks to the person on r/accounting who recommended it. I’d say I’m enjoying it but ‘enjoy’ isn’t the right word.

Here’s another recommendation for you:

If anyone from the AICPA is reading this allow me to pass along a message from r/CPA:

Across the pond, EY UK is about to make the “biggest executive cull for decades,” according to The Times:

EY is preparing for one of its biggest partner redundancy rounds in decades as its new boss seeks to protect the firm’s profits in the face of a prolonged slowdown in professional services.

The big four firm is expected to axe 30 partners, mainly in its consulting division, according to those familiar with the matter. Anna Anthony, the firm’s managing partner for the UK and Ireland, announced the cull to partners earlier this month but did not elaborate on numbers.

IGN reviews The Accountant 2. The TLDR: “There’s less bean counting in The Accountant 2, but far more blood and bullets.”

You can tell from the way the title is stylized on screen – as a mathematical exponent, like Alien³ – that The Accountant 2 has removed the self-seriousness from its predecessor’s otherwise delightful formula. Gavin O’Connor’s sequel is a blast, building on the story and relationships of 2016’s The Accountant to reveal a touching, hilarious portrait of fraught brotherhood within a charged and politically relevant plot. All the while, it leans full-tilt into a goofy setup that’s executed with utter confidence: Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), a.k.a. The Accountant, is a savant number-cruncher for the mob and part-time vigilante gunman whose autism is gently approached and realistically performed, but framed as though it were a superpower.

EY issued an internal control warning on a client:

UBS’s auditors have expressed an “adverse opinion” on the bank’s internal controls over its financial reporting for 2024 after it failed to resolve issues related to misstatements inherited from Credit Suisse, the Swiss lender said on Monday.

UBS has been working to resolve issues in Credit Suisse’s internal controls and said last year it was still reviewing potential misstatements after acquiring the lender in a government-orchestrated rescue in 2023.

It’s been almost exactly two years since UBS acquired what was left of Credit Suisse (March 19, 2023). Here’s something interesting on that topic WSJ published the other day:

UBS Doesn’t Know What to Do With All the Art It Inherited From Credit Suisse

When the Swiss banking giant UBS bought its rival Credit Suisse in 2023, it got roughly a half of a trillion dollars in assets as well as customers and offices around the world. It also took on a fleet of model ships, and more than 13,500 artworks, including pieces by Swiss artists Ferdinand Hodler and Félix Vallotton, as well as piles of decorative posters.

The art haul brought the total size of [UBS’s] collection to more than 40,000, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars even before the integration. Credit Suisse’s art was largely from local Swiss artists—not a seamless fit with the UBS collection, which takes a more global approach, with works from names like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein and Lucian Freud.

EisnerAmper wants in on that sweet, sweet Luxembourg money.

New York-headquartered EisnerAmper, a global business advisor, is pushing further into the European jurisdiction of Luxembourg, an important registration hub for cross-border investment funds and companies.

“Luxembourg’s position as a global financial hub makes it an attractive domicile for investors, and there is a need within our growing private equity client base for local expertise and audit solutions,” Irina Gershengoren, partner at EisnerAmper and director at EisnerAmper Luxembourg Sàrl, said.

ICYMI: KPMG Canada and eight other KPMGs across the globe got in trouble with the PCAOB.

Canadian Accountant covers the details:

The PCAOB enforcement action is explicit in naming Canadian corporations and the KPMG member firms that KPMG Canada used during its audit engagements. For example, KPMG Canada audited such household names as the Bank of Montreal, Suncor Energy, and IAMGOLD. During the engagements, “component auditors” KPMG Barbados, PwC US, and KPMG Ghana respectively participated in the audits, information that was not disclosed by KPMG Canada on the requisite forms.

The PCAOB report also reveals that KPMG Canada used a “shared service center” (SSC) located in India called KPMG Global Delivery Center Private Limited (“GDC”) in connection with 20 audits. GDC in turn used personnel from KPMG India and a public firm called B S R & Co. LLP, which is headquartered in Mumbai, India. The Canadian companies audited include household names such as Kinross, Pembina, and Rogers. The firm did not report the involvement of the SSCs in requisite forms but later amended the forms to include them.

Earlier: