Jackson, Rolfes, Spurgeon to Merge with Plante & Moran in Cincinnati

Jackson, Rolfes, Spurgeon & Co. (JRS), Cincinnati, is merging with Plante & Moran, PLLC tomorrow and plans to expand the firm in the future.

“Locally, the jobs we had here are going to stay,” said Plante & Moran’s incoming Managing Partner Gordon Krater. “If anything we’re looking to add jobs to the area, and to the city. Cincinnati is a city we intend to invest in and we’re looking to grow the office significantly over the next several years.”

JRS Managing Partner Jim Rolfs added: “We don’t anticipate any changes really in any of the jobs except some minor changes in roles and responsibilities, possibly.”

The merger brings JRS access to specialty practice professionals in international tax and consulting, corporate finance, financial advisory, healthcare, manufacturing and not-for-profit organizations.

JRS has five partners who will become Plante & Moran partners and a total of 50 staffers. It provides financial, tax and consulting services to small and mid-size companies in Southern Ohio. JRS’ specialty practices include manufacturing, real estate, construction and auto dealerships.

Plante & Moran sees the merger as a way to increase the firm’s local footprint. “Cincinnati rounds out our Ohio presence…we’ll be able to expand west and south from there,” Krater says.

CFOs, Treasurers, Staff Saw Modest Pay Hikes in 2008, AFP Survey Finds

Chief financial officers, treasurers and their staff saw their paychecks grow by an average of 3.4 percent between January 2008 and January 2009, more than the average white-collar worker, but somewhat less than the 4.5 percent increase they saw in 2007, according to the latest salary survey from the Association for Financial Professionals http://www.afponline.org/.

The average bonus was 15 percent, unchanged from 2007.

Middle managers reported slightly larger increases in total compensation than did VPs of finance and CFOs, said AFP, which collected its data from 3,000 professionals at 2,000 primarily North American companies in February 2009.

Managers of treasury/finance reported the highest percentage increase, 5.7 percent, and an average base salary that rose from $88,000 in the 2008 survey to $93,900 in 2009.

Here’s what AFP reported for other positions’ 2009 base salaries:

• CFO 184,300 up 3.2 percent
• VP of finance 161,600 up 3.2 percent
• Treasurer 161,600 up 3.9 percent
• Controller 116,500 up 3.3 percent
• Director treasury/finance 125,400 up 4 percent
• Assistant treasurer 124,700 up 3.8 percent
• Cash Manager 71,000 up 3.6 percent
  

PwC's Plans for India

India is the fastest-growing market for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and the company plans to add 3,500 staffers there over the next four years, up from the current 6,500, PwC Chairman Dennis Nally said during a recent tour of the country.

In an interview with The Economic Times, Nally talked about the use of non-Indian auditors in the wake of the Satyam debacle, how the growth of the Indian economy has increased demand for auditing and off-shoring:

Q: PwC recently decided to bring in auditors from its various international/outside affiliates to run a check on the audit work done in India. Is it to maintain consistent audit standards?

A: It is based on the whole idea of cross-border expertise, where we take individuals with skill sets in one country and share that expertise in another country. The idea is to make the firm stronger.

Q: What are your plans for India?

A: China, India and Vietnam are important markets for us, as the growth in such regions is very positive. We have over 6,500 employees in India, and plan to take the number to 10,000 in three to four years. We also plan to add a significant number of jobs from our sourcing strategy.

About 4 percent of PwC’s employees are based in India.

Nally told The Times of India that the company regrets its failure to detect the fraud at Satyam Computer Services. Two of PwC’s partners were arrested earlier this year in the case:

PwC has particularly brought about changes in the process of recruitment, in terms of looking out for qualities of ethics and values in an individual. "If we don't have those type of attributes from day one, it is pretty difficult to build them down the road. So this is what we really look for in our recruits and make those judgments right upfront on day one even before those individuals are offered to join the firm,'' said Nally.

CFOs Try to Avoid Layoffs

To avoid layoffs, nearly half (47 percent) of chief financial officers are trying other options ranging from salary freezes to shortened work weeks, according to the most recent quarterly survey conducted by Financial Executives International (FEI) and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

About a fifth (21 percent) of the 334 CFOs surveyed said they expanded early pensions and other retirement incentives, while 17 percent implemented furloughs.

Forty-seven percent of respondents were trying other tactics, including salary reductions, unpaid vacations, pay raise stalls and preferences to hold onto experienced personnel:

• Salary freeze – 51 percent
• Redistribution of responsibilities – 29 percent
• Elimination of bonuses – 29 percent
• Restructuring – 29 percent
• Salary decreases – 20 percent
• Shortened work week – 16 percent
• Mandatory unpaid time off – 11 percent
• Option to telecommute – 3 percent

On a more optimistic note, over a quarter (28 percent) of CFOs are witnessing signs of stabilization at companies where layoffs did not occur this quarter (30 percent).

The job outlook for recent graduates and interns was still challenging when the survey was conducted at the end of March. Nearly all (95 percent) of the CFOs whose companies traditionally hire students had either hired fewer, or the same amount as the previous year. A scant 5 percent of the CFOs had increased graduate hiring.

Among companies that have historically hired paid summer interns, 61 percent planned to hire fewer interns, and only 8 percent said they would hire more interns this summer.

Redundancies at Large UK Accounting Firms

The 50 largest accounting firms in the United Kingdom have reduced their headcount by about 3,000, or 5 percent, over the past year, according to an annual survey from Accountancy Age.

The top 50 firms by revenue now employ 56,669 qualified accountants, the survey found.

“Experts expect the job cuts to continue as firms try to slash costs in response to a sharp slowdown in demand for corporate finance and other services,” Accountancy Age predicts.

Even KPMG, which last winter reduced UK staffers to a four-day work week to avoid layoffs was planning to cut 200 jobs.

Phil Shohet, director of Kato Consultancy, told Accountancy Age firms are cutting managers and recruiting graduates:

This has forced partners to "trade-down" and handle more technical work, Shohet said, meaning that clients are often relying on inexperienced graduates to help them survive the recession. "You need more rounded managers who are technically very good, but who can also manage staff better," he said. "In independent firms there is very little management training."

Here in the U.S., the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports CPA firms employed 438,600 people in April of 2009, down 4,800 people from April of 2008.

The BLS also offers seasonally-adjusted numbers for the broader accounting and bookkeeping industry. Those figures show 5,100 fewer people working in the field in May of 2009 than were working in May of 2008.

Anecdotally, our viewers continue to share the news about layoffs in many cities by accounting firms, including the Big 4, as they comment on our blog What's Behind Layoffs at the Big Four.

Bay Area Job Market Better Than In Other California Areas

Accountants on the job hunt in California should pay extra attention to the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley areas. Robert Half International’s head of recruiting for the state said opportunities are likely to remain more plentiful in the northern California hubs over the next six months than other parts of the state. Brett Good, Half’s District President Southern California/Arizona, says that San Francisco and Silicon Valley were less affected by slowing real estate development than other areas. Moreover, Good also said that technology firms that are a staple of the Bay Area economy have kept busy on projects that started before the meltdown, not to mention supplementary assignments targeting efficiency. “From a technology perspective, for organizations involved in upgrades, these projects have long tails,” Good said. “You can’t just cut them off.  He added: “There are some companies that are just starting projects. (All) this has kept technology organizations puddling along. The question is whether San Francisco will (in the more distant future) fall into what the other major metropolitan areas are facing now if new projects aren’t coming along.” A recent Half survey of CFOs – released earlier this month – underscored Good’s comments. Eight percent of San Francisco CFOs responding to the quarterly Half Hiring Index said that they expected to reduce staff while 6 percent said they would probably hire employees. To be sure, an Index where fewer CFOs are likely to hire workers than make cuts generally reflects a weak job market. But the minus 2 differential for San Francisco was much better than negative 7 percent differentials in Los Angeles and San Diego and a negative 5 percent gap in Sacramento. 

Women Partners vs. Directors

Deloitte LLP’s announcement this week that it had reached the 1,000 mark for U.S. women partners, principals and directors is worthy of note for some not-so-obvious reasons.

The announcement talks about not just equity partners and non-equity partners, but directors as well – a term that’s sure to start an argument over what’s included in the category if you ask more than one firm to supply that figure. “They could all inflate their numbers if we expand the definition to include female directors,” points out Public Accounting Report (PAR) Editor Jonathan Hamilton.

If you’re just counting partners, the Big 4 run about even, according to PAR, which surveyed 171 firms about their percentage of women by staff category in mid-2008.

PAR’s results:

KPMG 18.6 percent
Plante & Moran 18.4 percent
Deloitte 18.1 pecent
CBIZ/MHMcC 18.1 percent
E&Y 17.0 percent
PwC 16.9 percent
Grant Thornton 14.9 percent
BDO Seidman 13.9 percent
RSM McGladrey 14.3 percent

Hamilton points out another potential reason for the increase in women partners: recent layoffs of partners, most of whom are older, white males, which could shift the ratio of male/female partners, even if no new female partners were created.

Going forward, accounting firms that don’t find a way to retain and promote women could find themselves facing serious retention issues due to two factors. First, the ratio of women to men in accounting programs continues to favor women in ever greater numbers, so the inflow of accountants is predominately female.

Second, there’s an exodus of older white males on the horizon. “More CPAs will retire over the next 10 years than retired in the previous 40 years combined,” Hamilton says.

Taken together, these trends mean we’re likely to see firms continue to attempt to position themselves as female-friendly.

Deloitte CEO Barry Salzberg could argue that the 1,000 number touted in this week’s press release really does reflect Deloitte commitment to developing women and minority leaders through its Initiative for the Retention and Advancement of Women.

After all, it was the first Big Four professional services firm to create an official program for the advancement of high-potential women through training, mentoring, coaching and succession-planning programs.

And, it is the first and only major professional services firm to have a woman chairman, Sharon Allen. In addition, its board of directors has six women -- a female representation of 29 percent.