What a difference a year makes.

In early 2023, the SEC climate rule was hotly anticipated. The proposal brought in almost 15,000 comment letters—and received serious pushback, especially around the area of Scope 3 emissions. Some groups threatened to sue.

But this year, other jurisdictions released new regulations that have stolen some of the SEC’s thunder. While the SEC rule is still consequential, it’s not the looming behemoth it once was. Wes Bricker, vice chair and US trust solutions co-leader at PwC, spoke with CFO Brew about the timing of the climate rule, how it differs from other regulations, and what CFOs should do when it’s released.

The ides of…April? We can likely expect the climate rule to appear by April. That’s because 2024 is an election year, Bricker said. Each incoming Congress has the opportunity to examine—and perhaps overturn—any final regulatory actions passed by federal agencies in the six months before it was seated. The SEC will want to finalize the climate rule ahead of that lookback period, Bricker said.

For more on the upcoming climate regulations, click here.—CV

…for good. Yep, you read that right. Embrace the power of AI and say goodbye to tedious creation, manual entry, and time-consuming tuning. And luckily for you, Square 9 is hosting a webinar that’ll walk you through how it’s done.

Elevating Efficiency: The Role of AI in Accounts Payable Automation is here to show you how to simplify your invoice processing. It’s your crash course into how AI-assisted capture tools can automate processes, eliminate approval delays, and curb lost invoices.

Want more deets? Tune in to the webinar to learn how to:

• automate invoice extraction
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Say goodbye to data entry.

Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young is cutting jobs across its US arms and delaying start dates for certain new hires, per an exclusive Wall Street Journal report. The move arrives as the consulting industry reckons with a broader, industry-wide downturn.

It’s not the first round of layoffs for EY this year. In April, the firm laid off under 5% of its US workforce, or 3,000 employees, primarily in consulting, after evaluating “current economic conditions,” the Journal reported in April.

EY started telling employees last week about the layoffs, and will continue talking to them this week as well, according to the Journal. “As part of our long-term planning, EY has been transforming our business to focus on the areas where our clients have the greatest needs,” an EY spokesperson told the paper.

EY isn’t the only accounting firm that’s trimmed headcount this year. KPMG cut 5% of its US employees this June, citing “economic headwinds, coupled with historically low attrition.” And in April, Deloitte laid off 1,200 employees, or 1.5%, of its US-based employees.

For more on EY’s layoffs, click here.—NP

On Monday, a jury sided with Fortnite-maker Epic Games, which had sued Google in an antitrust lawsuit, alleging its app store amounts to an illegal monopoly.

The jury’s decision marks a historic victory, and could usher in future scrutiny for other tech giants, particularly with respect to payments and pricing.

“Today’s verdict is a win for all app developers and consumers around the world,” Epic Games wrote in a company blog post. “It proves that Google’s app store practices are illegal and they abuse their monopoly to extract exorbitant fees, stifle competition and reduce innovation.”

The jury answered affirmatively to every question presented to them. And that included some hefty allegations against Google, including whether it wields a monopoly in Android app distribution and whether it “broke competition laws in how it ran its app store,” the Washington Post reported.

Click here to read more on the decision.—NP

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: 0.3%. That’s how much retail sales rose in November. While the number seems slight, it is a significant rebound from a decline in October. Maybe it will be a good holiday for retailers after all?

Quote: “Microsoft and other top-performing companies who have sustained themselves at the top of the rankings look to have developed a virtuous cycle that continuously reinforces their successes. This allows these companies to secure the resources and capital needed to innovate and secure talent.”—Michael Kelly, executive director of the Drucker Institute, on Microsoft’s fourth year atop the Management Top 250 best run companies list (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: Is Amazon’s strategy ultimately doomed to failure? (the Atlantic)

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