The latest PQ magazine is out today, providing you with our unique take on the profession.
You can read it all at: https://issuu.com/pqpublishing/docs/pq_magazine_august_2025
The Big 4 are in a lot of the news! It appears in the UK they are looking to replace entry-level graduates’ jobs with AI. The Big 4 have also been recently fined $8.5m in the Netherlands over the cheating of their employees in internal exams (well, it three out of the four, as KPMG had already been fined a record $25m for the same offence in 2024). We asked the Dutch AFM what will happen to these hundreds of staff, which included partners, and the answer came back – nothing!
We have the ACCA exam pass rates for June. There seems to be real progress being made in the pass rate of the option papers. For the first time ever all four had pass rates of 40% and above.
We have jumped onboard the great M&S strawberries and cream sandwich VAT debate, and try to explain when a poppadom is not a potato crisp, again only for tax purposes!
CIMA has a new working President, and ICAEW mid-tier firms explain why they are afraid of private equity.
In the second of his series AMLCC’s Richard Simms explains how he would get around your anti-money laundering ID checks too.
Finally, we have lots on Professor Atul K. Shah’s new book Organic Finance. Here is someone who really is trying to change how finance is taught, so we can see the world differently – not as something to exploit, but something to cherish.
Happy reading. – sign up for your free monthly subscription at www.pqmagazine.com
