Canada wins gold! Which Big Four firm is winning?
Congratulations to Alexandre Bilodeau for bringing a glorious golden victory to Canada's western shores!
In tribute to his spectacular mogul run, I offer some Big 4 snow sport action.
The snow profile above, sadly, is a little too similar to that in Vancouver this month. Who would've expected mild weather in February - aside from anyone who's ever visited or moved to B.C. for that very reason?
Alexandre's victory reminded me the fall recruiting season - yes I'm going there - where two of the Big Four firms trumpeted their involvement with the Winter Games.
But before we get into who's doing what on an official level, let's see what's going on from Google's point of view, searching for "FIRMNAME" and "Vancouver Olympics:
- PwC: they're running a study to figure out whether or not the Olympics end up breaking even or perhaps even generating a profit for the hosts. How very stereotypical for accountants, I know.
- KPMG: a profile on Executive VP and Deputy CEO Dave Cobb, a KPMG alumnus. We'll revisit this below.
- Ernst & Young: auditors of VANOC's 2004 Financial statements. Geekier than PwC perhaps?
- Deloitte: the official sponsor, supplier in the "Professional Services ("Big Four firm")" category. Deloitte has the honour of providing all that sexy intellectual support which people expect Chartered Accountants to deliver.
So three of the four firms have had or continue to have direct involvement with the Games.
I'm a bit curious as to whether Deloitte scored the audit work once they became official sponsors.
Depending on how you interpret "Independence" rules, if you're sponsoring an event like this you're technically not independent and should refrain from accepting the engagement - Deloitte's well known for not selling off its consulting arm, which could lead to exactly this sort of risky scenario. Smart money says they wouldn't bother with the risk associated with the VANOC audit and the perception of a glaring conflict of interest, but I'll have to dig deeper - or wait for someone to point out to me who's actually doing the audit!
Going back to last September, I witnessed a fun bit of bragging going on at a recruiting event, which I'll paraphrase for you:
Deloitte recruiter: "We won the right to be the official sponsor of the 2010 Games! Dig our official 2010 Olympics logo on all our audit reports!"
E&Y recruiter: "We're also cool! We sponsored the Freestyle Ski Team because we wanted to be directly associated with Canada's winners! Dig our cheeky 'Team 2010' scarves!"
It may be the gold and silver medals talking, but I'd say so far the E&Y strategy seems to have panned out best, in terms of associating one's firm with Canada's success.
I have to disclose that I'm a big fan of any company which rides the Olympic celebration bandwagon without shelling out the big bucks for an official deal: that's also why I love my sweet Valentine's idea of giving me a Starbucks card with the word "Canada" on it on top of a Whistler-esque scene.
As you can imagine, she's both brilliant and lovely.
Of course, it's been just a few hours since the gold medal victory occurred, so a cursory search for corporate press releases trumpeting the success of the skiers yields nothing that actually mines that potential association.
I really thought these marketing people would have celebratory notices ready to shoot out like some many well shaken bottles of champagne, but in all fairness, freestyle ski Canada hadn't updated their site the day of victory either - it took until the wee hours of Monday morning to tonight either - they hadn't gotten around to reporting on Jennifer Heils' win and skipped straight to celebrating Alexandre's victory. I suppose they run a tight ship and everyone was out, deservedly, partying like crazy rather than rushing off to their computers to publish the news.
But once the congratulatory messages join the growing chorus of cheering Canadians, I certainly hope Deloitte and E&Y come up with something better than, say this.
I was viewer #14 when I loaded the clip - which is a dismal hitcount. In all fairness, there's an English version too, but it features the same Green Dot from their logo and only had 308 views at the same point in time.
CAs are doing more than just coming up with questionable Youtube clips though.
They're much more deeply enmeshed in the games than the aforementioned companies with their sponsorships and consulting jobs - they're actually running the show as well, as the KPMG link above already suggested.
What that link didn't reveal, however, is that three of VANOC's top executives are CAs. This CA Magazine profile is a pretty good read, especially worth checking out if you're still asking that classic question, "what can I do after my hell years working in AuditLand?"
The first paragraph is a decent enough intro: "Of the gazillion things clamouring for Terry Wright’s attention, the
one topping today’s list is food — lots of it — enough for 1,200 hungry
athletes at a time, three times a day, every day, for more than two
weeks. Wright, a CA and the executive vice-president of services and
games operations for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010
Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), is snowed under a daily
avalanche of to-do lists. With a day as tightly wound as a Victorian
lady’s corset, timing is everything and, at this moment, food has top
priority."
Oh, I did wince when I read the line about a "corset," but then I probably am guilty of more than my fair share of cringe-worthy phrases, so we'll give them a pass on that.
Enough of the professional navel gazing - Go Canada!
Keep your head up!
Post Script: can someone please take this fence down or replace it with something much less ridiculous? I'm calling out the CA execs who should know better.