Accounting
Bessent projects normalcy while ‘completely aligned’ with Musk
In just two weeks as Treasury chief, Scott Bessent has seen plenty of turbulence. The department became a target of Elon Musk’s crackdown on federal spending — triggering protests outside Bessent’s office — and investors are on edge over President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policies.
Yet in an
The new Treasury secretary has the kind of financial-market pedigree to run the department that Washington has seen countless times before, and is often used to project assurance. Sitting in the agency’s historic
“People shouldn’t be concerned. At Treasury, we move deliberately and we fix things,” Bessent said.
Behind the steady-as-she-goes surface, though, Bessent is part of an administration that aims to break sharply with the policies of its predecessors, both Democrat and Republican — and isn’t wasting time getting started.
The Treasury has been the early focus of the Department of Government Efficiency, the Musk-led effort to identify wasteful spending and modernize federal technology. Trillions of dollars of payments flow through the department every year, and DOGE’s access could give Musk visibility into sensitive information about taxpayers, beneficiaries, contractors and employees — one reason why it’s set off alarm bells.
Bessent said he’s “completely aligned” with Musk on a program that’s key to the administration’s broader economic target of lowering outlays. “There are gigantic cost savings for the American people here,” the Treasury chief said. “This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings.”
Bessent also dismissed concerns about outside personnel that DOGE has deployed to examine the sensitive payment systems. “These are highly trained professionals, this is not some roving band running around doing things,” he said.
DOGE departure
Just hours after Bessent spoke, news emerged that somewhat undercut the appearance of Bessent having full control. The Wall Street Journal reported that one of the key DOGE staffers granted access to Treasury payment systems had resigned, after he was linked to a social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics. The Treasury didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Treasury civil servants emerging as potential obstacles to the DOGE campaign have been lauded for decades as competent and apolitical professionals — including by Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury chief from his first term. And Bessent sought to play down any concerns about politicization of the agency.
The DOGE investigation is “an operational review, it’s not an ideological review,” he said. “At Treasury, we move deliberately and we fix things. That’s the way we work. So everyone should know that all the payments are going to be made. They’re going to be in good order.”
The Treasury chief took a no-drama view of potentially disruptive shifts in other areas too, like currency and trade policies. He said the U.S. will continue to have a “strong dollar” policy under Trump, while keeping an eye on what trade partners are doing.
“What we don’t want is other countries to weaken their currencies, to manipulate their trade,” he said, adding that the accumulation of large trade surpluses by other countries like China shows “there is not a free-form trading system.”
Trump has vowed to use tariffs in order to rebalance trade — imposing new ones on China this week and threatening to do the same with Mexico and Canada, the two biggest U.S. trade partners. Bessent dismissed the idea that tariffs will be inflationary for the U.S., though he acknowledged there may be a “small, one-time price adjustment” as a consequence.
Bessent said he’s already held his first meeting with his Fed counterpart Jerome Powell — the chiefs of the two agencies typically meet regularly — and has no intention of telling him what to do, as Trump did many times during his last spell in the White House.
“Prospectively, monetary policy — I will not comment on, and I’m sure he’s going to do the right thing, so there’ll be no criticism,” Bessent said. The administration’s focus is not so much on Fed rates, he said, as on longer-term borrowing costs and “how do we get the whole curve down.”
Eide Bailly LLP, a Top 25 Firm based in Fargo, North Dakota, is expanding in the Midwest, adding Volpe Brown & Co. LLC, a firm headquartered in North Canton, Ohio that specializes in serving McDonald’s franchises.
The deal is set to take effect on May 5. It will expand Eide Bailly’s footprint in northeast Ohio and add a team with over 40 years of experience in client accounting services, complex reporting, tax and advisory work, especially for McDonald’s franchise owner operators.
“After meeting with Eide Bailly’s leadership and experiencing the professionalism and care shown during due diligence, I knew this was the right path forward,” said Volpe Brown founder Tony Volpe in a statement Monday. “Their values, culture, and people-first mindset mirror what we’ve built over four decades.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eide Bailly ranked No. 19 on
“This addition reflects Eide Bailly’s commitment to aligning with firms that share our vision of forward-thinking service, client care, and a strong internal culture,” said Eide Bailly managing partner and CEO Jeremy Hauk in a statement. “We’re proud to welcome the Volpe Brown team and continue building our presence in Ohio with people who care deeply about their clients and community.”
Eide Bailly’s already has some employees in Canton, Ohio, but as part of the transition, they will relocate to Volpe Brown’s office in North Canton.
Eide Bailly expanded to Ohio just last year by merging in
Andersen Group, the resurrected version of the former accounting giant Arthur Andersen, has made plans to go public, submitting a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The firm said Monday the registration relates to a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. But the number of shares to be offered and price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The IPO is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions, according to Andersen.
In February, Andersen announced plans to
It was originally known as WTAS (short for Wealth and Tax Advisory Services USA Inc.), which was founded in 2002 by CEO Mark Vorsatz and 22 former Arthur Andersen partners. Vorsatz renamed the firm Andersen Tax in 2014 after acquiring the trademarks and copyrights from Arthur Andersen LLP and Andersen Worldwide, and has since grown the network worldwide.
Andersen Global now has over 19,000 professionals worldwide and a presence in over 500 locations through its member firms and collaborating firms. In the U.S., Andersen has more than 2,000 people in 24 cities across the country.
Andersen Consulting will be offering services such as human capital management, cybersecurity, business transformation, strategy, technology, artificial intelligence and sustainability. Existing consulting clients include Abbott, BMW, Cisco, Heineken, IKEA, ING, LEGO, Mercedes-Benz, Michelin, Microsoft, Pizza Hut/Sapphire, T-Mobile and Toyota.
Semple, Marchal & Cooper LLP, a Phoenix-based firm that took over the audits of Trump Media & Technology Group last year, has filed suit against the BDO Alliance and its chairman after it was ejected from the alliance following an angry phone call.
The firm’s lawsuit alleges it was kicked out of the alliance because it took on Trump Media as a client, a contention the BDO Alliance denies.
Trump Media, the parent company of the Truth Social network founded by Donald Trump,
SM&C has been a member of the BDO Alliance for 30-plus years and was a founding member in 1994, according to a lawsuit it filed in March in an Arizona court, and over that time has paid more than $2 million in fees. There was only a brief hiatus in the firm’s membership in the alliance during that time due to a conflict of interest that the firm says has since been resolved. One of its founding partners, Robert Semple, has also been a member of the Alliance Partners’ Advisory Council for approximately 10 years. The firm has remained in good standing, at least until June of last year.
The firm’s lawsuit claims that after news reports began to circulate last May that Semple, Marchal & Cooper was Trump Media’s new auditing firm, the firm’s director of assurance services, senior partner Steven Marchal, received a phone call from Michael Horwitz, executive director of the BDO Alliance, in which Horwitz questioned the firm’s decision to take on Trump Media as a client, and asked why it didn’t alert the alliance in advance.
The suit further alleges that Horwitz threatened to kick SM&C out of the alliance if it didn’t resign from the audit, and claims that after the firm refused, it received a letter from the alliance dated May 31, 2024, with an effective date of June 30, 2024, that terminated the firm’s membership.
The BDO Alliance strongly disputes the allegation.
“The allegations in the complaint are frivolous and lack any foundation in the reality of why BDO Alliance USA chose to exercise its right to sever its relationship with the plaintiff,” it wrote in a statement to Accounting Today. “While members are independent firms charged with their own professional decision-making, BDO Alliance USA has the rarely used right to sever that relationship when quality and other issues are present. Plaintiff’s effort to distort the decision to sever the relationship will be vigorously defended in the judicial process.”
SM&C’s suit claims that the termination of the firm’s membership in the alliance has created the false and misleading implication that it happened either because somehow its independence as an auditor had been compromised by its political affiliation or because of some other supposed misconduct. But the firm asserts it has not compromised its independence nor engaged in any misconduct. Instead it says the alliance wanted it to compromise its independence by allowing political views to “infect” its role as an auditor of a publicly traded company.
Semple, Marchal & Cooper declined further comment beyond the lawsuit.
-
Blog Post1 week agoDocumenting Bookkeeping Processes and Procedures
-
Economics1 week agoTrump’s approval rating on economy at lowest of presidential career
-
Economics1 week agoDonald Trump wants a certain kind of immigrant: the uber-rich
-
Economics1 week agoChecks and Balance newsletter: The Democrats’ future is up for grabs
-
Economics1 week agoTrump tariffs could cause summer economic slump: Chicago Fed president
-
Personal Finance6 days agoConsumers are making different financial choices in response to tariffs
-
Personal Finance1 week agoExperts see higher stagflation risks. Here’s what it means for your money
-
Economics5 days agoBusiness already are trying to pass tariff cost onto customers, Fed report says