Accounting
Bessent wins Senate confirmation to be US Treasury Secretary
The U.S. Senate confirmed Scott Bessent as the next Secretary of the Treasury, becoming the chief economic spokesman for President Donald Trump and his sweeping agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and trade rebalancing.
The former hedge fund manager won confirmation by a vote of 68 to 29 Monday. Besides the support of all Republican senators, Bessent secured the backing of one independent and 15 Democrats, in a sign the minority party might be more willing to cooperate with the administration on certain economic matters than during Trump’s first term. Trump’s first Treasury chief, Steven Mnuchin, garnered a
Bessent becomes Trump’s
He will be the first openly gay Treasury secretary. He said during his confirmation hearing that this was his third attempt at public service, after his sexual orientation precluded him from attending the U.S. Naval Academy and from joining the Foreign Service.
Once sworn in, the 62-year-old former colleague of billionaire George Soros will face an immediate challenge managing the U.S. debt load. The federal debt limit kicked back in at the start of January, forcing the Treasury to deploy special accounting maneuvers to avoid breaching it. And on Feb. 5, the department is due to update its plans for the issuance of Treasuries at a time of historically wide budget deficits.
It’s been three decades since bond vigilantes bullied a sitting administration into curbing the nation’s fiscal trajectory. Bill Clinton was forced to rejig his economic agenda to bring down Treasury yields that had climbed in the wake of his 1992 election — in turn threatening to boost borrowing costs for Americans on everything from home mortgages to credit cards.
With benchmark 10-year Treasury yields threatening to test the 5% level — thanks in part to the fiscal outlook — Bessent’s expertise in financial markets is seen as a particular asset, amid potential disruption from everything from tariff surprises and tax plans to shifts in monetary policy. Even his Democratic predecessor, Janet Yellen, highlighted his market experience before leaving office this month.
Fiscal outlook
Bessent in his Jan. 16 confirmation hearing underscored his concern about the size of federal borrowing being of such a scale it could potentially constrain the federal government’s response to future crises. “We have never seen this before,” he said of the current deficit being in excess of 6% of GDP despite the U.S. not being in a recession or at war.
His fiscal warning was an echo of similar comments dating from Treasury chiefs in the George W. Bush administration until now. Still, it’s Congress that decides on taxes and spending, so Bessent will need to persuade not just the president to make painful spending cuts, but also lawmakers.
The incoming Treasury chief will have to reconcile his deficit-reduction plans — he has targeted shrinking it to 3% of GDP — with the Trump administration’s much-anticipated tax cuts, which some economists caution may only worsen the fiscal outlook. Bessent has argued that the problem is spending, not taxation levels, and that Trump’s pro-growth agenda will improve the fiscal situation, alongside revenue streams from measures including tariffs.
“A whole-of-government approach that couples deregulation with tax reform and other economic levers, such as implementing strong trade policy, will unleash an economic golden age,” Bessent said at his Senate Finance Committee hearing.
Taxation largely dominated that session, with some Democrats voicing their opposition.
“Now it may not come as any big surprise that a hedge fund manager would defend an unfair tax system that’s rigged to benefit hedge fund managers,” said Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the finance panel, who joined the bulk of his party’s Senate caucus in voting against Bessent’s confirmation. “But he struggled with tax questions throughout the hearing.”
Sanctions, dollar
Away from the domestic front, Bessent will also need to quickly get up to speed with the Treasury’s raft of sanctions against adversaries across the world and prepare for his first international engagements as the nation’s top economic diplomat. A meeting of Group of Twenty finance ministers due in South Africa in late February could offer a first chance to meet with counterparts from the world’s largest economies.
Bessent suggested he could go harder on Russia sanctions in his confirmation hearing, saying he would be “100% on board for taking sanctions up” on major Russian oil companies if Trump requests such a move. Trump said in a Jan. 22 Truth Social post he would levy taxes, tariffs and sanctions on Russia unless it ends the war in Ukraine.
Bessent also said that the U.S. could “make Iran poor again” through the use of sanctions, later clarifying that he meant the Iranian government and not its people. But levying and enforcing harsh sanctions on two major oil-producing countries without a boost in production from other nations could constrain the supply of oil and drive prices up.
Currency policy and foreign-exchange markets are seen looming large on Bessent’s agenda. In Trump’s press statement announcing Bessent’s nomination, the president highlighted the importance of the US maintaining the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve asset.
During appearances as a Trump advocate before the November election, Bessent was vocal about the need for a new international currency accord. With the pendulum of tariff threats swinging almost hour-by-hour, exchange rates are moving on any snippet of news.
That volatility would have been a trading opportunity in Bessent’s former life as a hedge-fund trader. But he’ll have a new vantage point once sworn in as Treasury chief.
Big Four firm PwC announced new agentic AI capacities, including a model that proactively identifies areas of value leakage and acts inside the tools teams already use to fix them itself.
The new solution,
The software, which is supported by PwC’s recently released
The system connects directly into ERP environments, continuously monitors key metrics, and acts inside the tools teams already use. For example, a supply chain agent might detect rising shipping costs and automatically reroute deliveries to reduce spend. Finance agents can spot and correct billing errors before they reach the customer. Clients typically see measurable efficiency gains in the first quarter, with continued improvements over time as the system learns and adapts.
“Too many transformations still rely on one-off pilots and stale data, stretching the gap from insight to impact and suffocating ROI,” said Saurabh Sarbaliya, PwC’s principal for enterprise strategy and value. “Agent Powered Performance flips the economics by distilling PwC’s industry transformation playbooks into AI agents that turn static insights into compounding gains, without rebooting each time.”
Agent Powered Performance is platform-agnostic and built on an open architecture so it can work across different LLMs based on client preferences and task-specific needs. It works with major enterprise platforms including Oracle, SAP, Workday and Guidewire.
Agent OS Model Context Protocol
PwC also
By integrating this standard, agent systems registered as MCP servers can be used by any authorized AI agent. This reduces redundant integration work and the overhead of writing custom logic for each new use case. By standardizing how agents invoke tools and handle responses, MCP also simplifies the interface between agents and enterprise systems, which will serve to reduce development time, lower testing complexity, and cut deployment risk. Finally, any interaction between an agent and an MCP server is authenticated, authorized and logged, and access policies are enforced at the protocol level, which means that compliance and control are native to the system—not layered on after the fact.
This means that agents are no longer siloed. Instead, they can operate as part of a coordinated, governed system that can grow as needs evolve, as MCP support provides the interface to external tools and systems. This enables organizations to move beyond isolated pilots toward integrated systems where agents don’t just reason, but act inside real business workflows. It marks a shift from experimentation to adoption, from isolated tools to scalable, governed intelligence.
Research Composer
Finally, a PwC spokesperson said the firm has also launched a new internal tool for its professionals called Research Composer, a patent-pending AI research agent embedded in the firm’s ChatPwC suite, designed to accelerate insight generation by combining web data with PwC-uploaded content.
Professionals will use the Research Composer to produce in-depth, citation-backed reports for either the firm or its clients. The solution is intended to enhance the quality of client work by equipping teams with research and strategic analysis capabilities.
The AI agent prompts users through a step-by-step research workflow, allowing them to shape how reports are packaged—tailoring the output to meet strategic needs. For example, a manager in advisory services might use Research Composer to evaluate white space opportunities across industries or geographies, drawing from internal reports and up-to-date market data.
Eide Bailly, a Top 25 Firm based in Fargo, North Dakota, is growing its presence in the Pacific Northwest by adding Traner Smith, based in Edmonds, Washington, effective June 2, 2025.
Traner Smith’s team includes two partners and 16 staff members and specializes in tax compliance and advisory services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eide Bailly ranked No. 19 on
Eide Bailly already has offices in Seattle, but hopes to grow further in the Pacific Northwest. “We’re pleased to welcome the talented team at Traner Smith to Eide Bailly,” said Eide Bailly managing partner and CEO Jeremy Hauk in a statement Monday. “Their expertise with high-net-worth individuals, real estate and privately held businesses aligns well with our strengths, and their client-centric approach is a perfect cultural fit. Having an office in Edmonds, Washington, is a great complement to our existing presence in Seattle. Together, we’re poised to deliver even greater value to families and businesses in the Seattle metro area.”
“Joining Eide Bailly is a natural next step for us — it provides access to deeper technical resources in areas like state and local tax, national tax, succession planning and international tax while allowing us to continue the personalized service our clients value,” said Kevin Smith, a partner at Traner Smith, in a statement.
“With this expanded support and platform, we’re excited to grow our reach, elevate what we do best, and help more clients than ever before,” said Shane Summer, another partner at Traner Smith, in a statement.
Eide Bailly has announced several other mergers in recent weeks. Earlier this month, it added
In 2023, Eide Bailly added
Top 100 firm
“We began working with Knuula in Spring 2024 to streamline our engagement letter process,” said Don Murphy, Managing Member of BMSS. “It quickly became clear that Knuula was not only a strong solution for us, but also an ideal partner in advancing industry-wide automation.”
While the specific terms of the deal were not disclosed, a spokesperson with Knuula said that, after this investment, BMSS and a collection of 21 of their partners now own 13% of the company. The investment represents not some passive revenue deal but an active collaboration between the two companies, with the spokesperson saying they will be working closely together on things like product development, new features, improvements, and networking.
The deal comes about a year after Knuula integrated with QuickFee, a receivables management platform for professional service providers, which allowed users to have engagement letters directly connecting to their QuickFee billing platform, tying the execution of the letter directly to the billing process.
“We’ve long sought to partner with a firm focused on strategic innovation in the accounting space,” said Jamie Peebles, founder of Knuula. “To develop a perfect solution for large firms, it is ideal to have a partner that is willing to work closely together and iterate quickly. This requires constant feedback between our two teams. The IT team from BMSS worked with our development team constantly and helped us iterate rapidly. We also had consistent input from partners, manager, and administrative staff to help us make valuable changes to Knuula. BMSS was a perfect partner for us.”
PwC AI agent acts proactively to preserve value
Eide Bailly merges in Traner Smith
BMSS announces investment, collaboration with Knuula
New 2023 K-1 instructions stir the CAMT pot for partnerships and corporations
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