Lakeland Fire + Safety, a personal protective equipment (PPE) and fire safety gear manufacturer headquartered in Alabama, has been thinking about tariffs since 2016. The first time President Trump was elected, most of the company’s disposable PPE equipment was manufactured in China. Looking around the corner like all good scenario planners, the company decided to spin up facilities in Vietnam and India.

This time, it’s running that playbook again. In 2024 it acquired Veridian, an Iowa-based fire apparel brand, a strategic move to ramp up fire equipment production as PPE demand subsided in the post-Covid era, Lakeland CFO Roger Shannon told CFO Brew.

The sale accomplished other goals, too. The company could now outfit first responders and firefighters in American-made gear, and had a facility to avoid tariffs.

“When all this tariff discussion started, it was that final layer of comfort,” Shannon said.

Lakeland might be a unicorn in the manufacturing industry. Its ability to seamlessly shift from one region to another is a fairy tale for most companies. But it still offers lessons for CFOs on how to mitigate tariff risk in the future.

For more on how this company is mitigating tariff risk, click here.—JK

There’s a lot from the mid-to-late 2000s that invites feelings of nostalgia.

Seth Rogen and his troupe dominated the comedy scene with hits like Knocked Up, Superbad, and Pineapple Express. Warped Tour was at its zenith. Eli Manning and the Giants gave NFL fans the Helmet Catch in Super Bowl XLII. The 2007–08 global financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession gave an entire generation lasting economic anxiety…wait a minute.

A core memory needn’t be cheerful to be consequential. Indeed, the financial crisis consequently led to passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, an overhaul of the US financial sector “on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression,” as then-President Barack Obama described it.

The Dodd-Frank Act was lawmakers’ response to “the shadow banking system at the time,” according to Mark Nelson, senior legal analyst at Wolters Kluwer, and they passed it in 2010.

Dodd-Frank still plays a central role in public discourse 15 years later, though its future is uncertain in a Trump administration focused on deregulation. Before we go there, let’s examine all the ways it impacted banking and, more generally, corporate America.

Keep reading this CFO Brew Quarter Century Project story here.—AZ

PwC laid off around 1,500 staff members this month, or about 2% of its US workforce, according to the Financial Times. The bulk of the cuts affected tax and audit employees.

“Historically low attrition” combined with “continued market shifts” necessitated the cuts, PwC US assurance leader Deanna Byrne said in an email to staff seen by Business Insider.

Many of the staff who were laid off were newer hires, the Financial Times reported. The firm is also cutting back on campus recruiting efforts and internships, though it will honor internship offers it has already made.

Boom to bust: The largest US accounting firms saw revenues soar post-pandemic. In 2022, the top 100 firms’ combined revenue jumped 18.55%, according to Accounting Today. In 2023, they experienced slower but still-impressive revenue growth of 12.88%.

PwC was no exception. Its revenue climbed 15.7% in 2023, and a further 9.74% in 2024. It went on a hiring spree over that same period, growing its US workforce from around 56,000 in 2022 to nearly 77,000 in 2025.

But the mini-boom appears to have ended, for PwC and for large accounting firms in aggregate. Last year the top 100 firms had an anemic growth rate of 4.89%, what Accounting Today called “one of the weakest performances of the century.”

Click here to keep reading.—CV