ACCOUNTING

Uncovered

Een recordboete. That’s how you say “record fine” in Dutch, and that’s what the Netherlands division of KPMG got from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which levied a $25 million penalty over widespread exam cheating and said a cover-up went all the way to the top of the Dutch arm of the Big Four firm.

Former head of assurance Marc Hogeboom, who was on KPMG Netherlands’s management board, was one of hundreds of employees who, from 2017 to 2022, shared or received access to test answers for training courses on subjects including US auditing and professional ethics, the PCAOB said in a news release.

In case you’re wondering, the Dutch term for cheating on an ethics exam is ironie.

The head of KPMG Netherlands expressed remorse. “​​The conclusions are damning, and the penalty is a reflection of that,” CEO Stephanie Hottenhuis said in a statement. “I deeply regret that this misconduct happened in our firm.”

She’s headed the firm since August 2018, according to her LinkedIn profile, which states her belief in “KPMG’s purpose to INSPIRE CONFIDENCE AND EMPOWER CHANGE in our society.”

For more on the record fine, click here.—GD

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SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Level up

Ankur Agrawal is a partner at McKinsey. He’ll be part of a panel on upskilling and reskilling at our upcoming CFO Brew live event, “Next-Gen Finance: Future-Proofing Your Business Operations.” He spoke with us about how the finance department’s role has grown over the past several years, and about what skills finance professionals need to keep up.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How have you seen the role of the finance department expand in recent years?

These rising expectations of the finance role, and the way it interacts with the business, have been in play for the last decade or even more. What has accelerated the trajectory has been the radical changes driven by Covid-19, macroeconomic uncertainty, and the disruption caused by technology. Finance is at the center of it. That has opened possibilities for finance functions to play a more strategic role, to help businesses think hard about economic decisions and choices and tradeoffs.

What skills will finance professionals need to cope with this shift?

One I would call the softer skills of influencing and helping business leaders make decisions.

On the harder skills, I would say using data and being more facile with connecting the dots across different data sets to make their insights richer…I expect finance to get one step beyond [being] aware about technology—not doing actual coding, but being the “analytic glue.” This translation role between hardcore technology and traditional insight will become even more important. Some finance functions will need a lot more hands-on knowledge of analytic tools.

Click here to read more on future proofing your skills.—CV

ECONOMY

Sticking around

The case for a pending Federal Reserve interest rate cut just got weaker, thanks to this darned stubborn inflation.

The consumer price index (CPI) increased 3.5% year over year in March, an uptick from February’s 3.2% increase, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A bump in costs for shelter and gasoline accounted for the majority of the March increase.

Markets were not happy. According to CNBC, the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond bounded above 4.5% after the CPI showed it wasn’t ready to quiet down just yet. Stocks were down on the news, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Rate cuts could be out the window,” David Russell, global head of market strategy at TradeStation, told CNBC.

Click here to see what persistent inflation means for rate cuts.—AZ

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