The Thursday Lowdown ⬇️

If you're new around here, every day I share the 4-5 best accounting insights I saw in the past 24 hours.

I scroll. so you don't have to.

💎 WTF of the Day

Baker Tilly + Moss Adams?

Somewhere in a beige conference room, 14 guys named Doug just shook hands over a $2 billion handshake that no one outside of LinkedIn cares about.

Baker Tilly and Moss Adams, two of the biggest non Big Four firms in the U.S. are reportedly chatting about a possible merger. If it goes through they’d form a 9,000 person giant with nearly $2.8 billion in combined revenue. That’s Big Four-ish territory.

Why’s this happening? More clients, more talent shortages, more pressure to offer fancy services it’s pushing midsized firms to team up or get left behind.

And in six months, no one will remember it happened, except the poor intern updating the email signatures.

Source

💎 What’s poppin in accounting

EY bolsters AI capacities for assurance

EY just dropped a fresh assurance work AI play, they’re building a robot army to replace Karen in compliance because she takes too long to read a lease agreement

They’re building out tools to automate the boring stuff data extraction, contract reviews, and anomaly detection basically all the things that used to take junior auditors 300 hours, two breakdowns, and a gallon of cold brew. You think this is about efficiency? No, it’s about replacing every overworked 24 year old with ChatGPT.

And the best part? They’re gonna call it innovation while laying off half the staff via Zoom. ‘We’re enhancing assurance!’ Yeah, Karen’s assured… that she’s unemployed.

Source

 📊 Weekly Trend Chart

Tesla just got smoked

While Elon’s tweeting memes and blaming factory downtime, BYD just delivered 1.52 million EVs in Q4 alone. For perspective, that’s more than Tesla sold all year in 2020.

The wildest part, BYD’s profits might double this quarter thanks to lower costs, aggressive global expansion, and a fat lead in plug in hybrids (which Tesla doesn’t even make). The chart doesn’t lie, BYD pulled ahead in 2022 and never looked back.

Tesla still wins the PR game. But when it comes to moving cars? BYD’s the one eating Elon’s lunch

#😂 

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