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All the latest goings on in the Big 4

Deloitte’s Connolly to quit top post

After a decade at the helm, Deloitte top man John Connolly is stepping down. The plan is that he leaves in May 2011 after three terms as UK senior partner and CEO. Deloitte’s 700 partners will be voting on his successor in the next six months. Interestingly, ‘candidates’ aren’t allowed to travel around the offices drumming up support. Under Connolly, partners’ profits have jumped 300% to a £883,000 average in 2009. His own salary topped £5 million last year. Connolly grew up in Manchester and is a Man Utd fan. He has described his childhood as ‘dead ordinary’. The son of a civil servant, he dropped out of school at 16 and started working with a high street accountant. Within 10 years he had moved to London and become a partner at Mann Judd (it eventually got swallowed up by Deloitte). Early names in the race to senior partner are David Sproull, Martin Eadon and Vince Niblett.

Who pays the auditor?

Ernst & Young’s latest run-in with the regulators has brought forth a surprising idea on how the auditors could be paid. The Evening Standard’s Anthony Hilton said recently: “It is time for auditors to be paid differently, so there is no possibility of conflict of interest when they are paid by the people they are supposed to be keeping in check.” He believes it would be a simple matter for auditors to be paid by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) when their work is done. The FRC could then either recover the money from the company directly or via some industry-wide levy. Hilton believes the advantages of this idea are huge. First, it would remove the conflict; second, it would allow the FRC to spread audit work around so that some firms outside the Big 4 could get more work. Third, Hilton felt it would be much easier to keep a check on non-audit activities. He believes arguments against this idea would be hard to find outside the Big 4.

PwC partner sues bosses

In what is believed to be the first case of its kind, a partner of a Big 4 firm is suing his bosses, claiming disability discrimination after being made redundant. PwC’s Colin Tenner is alleging his redundancy was a sham because of his mental health problems. Tenner, 45, suffers from depression and anxiety. He is claiming the average age of ‘retirement’ for partners is 60, so is seeking compensation for the loss of 15 years of future earnings.

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