Accounting
KPMG US aims to become a law firm too
KPMG US has set up a subsidiary that has filed an application in Arizona to establish a law firm in the state, with hopes of going national.
The subsidiary of the New York-based Big Four firm, known as KPMG Law US, filed an application with the Arizona Supreme Court to establish KPMG Law US as an “alternative business structure.” KPMG Law US will provide a set of integrated business solutions for legal teams, adding to the global capabilities of KPMG Law.
KPMG member firms around the world have been offering legal services for over a decade and are now in over 80 jurisdictions. In fiscal year 2024, the fastest-growing function across the KPMG global network was tax and legal services.
“KPMG Law US will be positioned to deliver innovative and quality services for legal teams, drawing on the KPMG network’s global experience as well as our technology capabilities and scale,” said a KPMG US spokesperson. “Legal teams navigate complex challenges with the support of traditional law firms. They also face substantial and wide-ranging process challenges that can benefit from legal expertise and technology at scale. We aim to solve those pain points, especially on tight timelines.This focused effort is a natural extension of our capabilities and will complement the services of traditional law firms.”
KPMG US already serves over 100 clients in Arizona, leveraging approximately 300 people across the firm’s audit, tax, advisory and business process group teams. Its presence has grown 35% since 2020 and supports the growth of the Arizona economy.
KPMG would be the first Big Four firm in the U.S. to operate a law firm, according to the
“We have been studying Arizona’s structure for years, and we’re excited by the possibility that it presents to us,” said KPMG Tax principal Tom Greenaway, the designated principal on the application, during a January 14 court hearing. “We think the time is right now for us, given the advances that we have made in technology and the maturity of this market. We really think that we can bring innovation and a complete set of integrated legal solutions to our clients and to other clients here in Arizona.”
The firm aims to grow the law firm beyond Arizona once it has received approval from the state supreme court and expand to other parts of the country by leveraging Arizona’s laws and its alternative business structure,
“As an Arizona ABS, KPMG Law US would be able to practice law in the United States, subject to legal rules in its various jurisdictions, which is something that no Big Four network firm can currently do,” said the spokesperson. “Pending approval, this innovation would differentiate KPMG Law US both in the legal and the consulting markets. KPMG Law US would be able to bring legal capabilities to managed services, such as contract lifecycle management, among others.”
Partnering with firms in other states, KPMG Law US plans to serve clients nationally, including in Arizona. It has established relationships with law firms to support its legal teams. KPMG Law US intends to operate within each state’s ethics rules just like every other law firm. It will be able to co-counsel, refer or partner with separate staffing firms and other law firms, to expand services across jurisdictions, subject in all cases to legal and ethics rules in its various jurisdictions. KPMG pointed out that other ABS law firms operate this way and the model is also consistent with common practice among law firms. For decades, it noted, U.S. law firms, both small and large, have used co-counsel arrangements and staffing companies to provide coverage for their work across different jurisdictions.
“In order to do this job effectively, I need to be embedded within and working shoulder to shoulder proactively with the business,” said KPMG principal David Rizzo, a compliance lawyer for the ABS application, during the court hearing. “We are committed to running a tight ship and to standing on the right side of the law in Arizona, and in all other jurisdictions, backed by the support and resources of KPMG LLP.”
The firm plans to abide by all of the ethics rules surrounding such arrangements. “We will strive to set the bar for quality and ethics in legal services,” said the spokesperson. “KPMG Law US will be governed by the same high ethical standards that apply to other law firms and will build on our long-standing commitment to quality, ethics, independence and compliance with professional standards. We look forward to enhancing our multidisciplinary model and driving further innovation in the professional services industry, pending approval.”
KPMG Law US plans to offer legal managed services, global entity management, outbound legal project management support, and legal transformation solutions to legal teams. KPMG Law US will mainly deliver large-scale, process-driven work, such as volume contracting, remediation exercises, M&A-driven harmonization of contracts, and other legal managed services, leveraging its technology. KPMG has a cloud-based and generative AI-enabled Digital Gateway platform that serves as a “control tower” for a company’s set of tax and legal data, providing advanced analytics and reporting capabilities.
“Technology and process are something that we’re really good at,” said Greenaway at the hearing. “We’ve spent a decade or more investing massive sums of money in building our technology platform and solutions. Our firm has a proprietary Digital Gateway platform that we are going to deploy across these business law problems that emerge. We think we can provide a more efficient set of solutions than a lot of existing providers.”
EY continued to audit NMC Health Plc despite suspicions that management withheld key documents that revealed its true debt position, lawyers for the collapsed firm argued at the start of a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) London trial.
NMC’s administrator, Alvarez & Marsal, sued EY in London alleging negligence and failure to spot the billions of hidden debt between 2012 and 2018 when EY was the auditor. NMC was put into administration in 2020 following allegations of fraud at the health care provider.
“It is remarkable that, despite its suspicions that management was lying about being unable to provide access to the group’s general ledger, EY continued to conduct the audits,” lawyers for NMC said on the first day of the London trial.
EY denies the allegations and said the claims were “unfounded.” “Even a bloodhound was likely to be deceived in this case, let alone a competent watchdog,” lawyers for the audit firm said in court filings.
The collapse of NMC sparked a flurry of lawsuits and investigations in the U.K. and U.S. as different sides point the finger of blame. The U.K.’s markets watchdog previously
NMC’s case is “enormously inflated” and the “true losses, if any, are far less than its headline claim,” lawyers for EY said in court filings. “NMC’s pleaded case depends on both an exaggerated conception of the scope of EY’s duty and an unrealistic premise as to how auditors faced with challenging client circumstances should behave.”
The health care company was put into administration in 2020 by a London court as the scale of the firm’s troubles emerged following a short seller’s report.
“This was a complex, pervasive and collusive fraud, and responsibility for it lies squarely with its perpetrators, including NMC’s owners, directors and the treasury and finance team,” EY’s spokesperson said in a statement.
The firm’s founder Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, who is not a party to the case, has previously denied any wrongdoing saying he was a victim of the fraud. Shetty, who was sued separately by NMC, blamed former senior executives and EY for the alleged fraud. Shetty’s lawyers didn’t immediately comment on the trial.
EY agreed to remove auditors who sought more information from NMC, replacing them with people “hand-picked” by the collapsed hospital operators’ top shareholders, lawyers for NMC alleged.
The auditor was the victim of “active concealment” of the fraud and it had risen to the challenges posed by “bombastic style” of functioning by the majority shareholders’ representative on the firm’s board, according to EY’s lawyers.
Al Drago/Bloomberg
The week before confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s nominee for commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, former Missouri Congressman Billy Long, Democrats in the Senate are asking questions about the timing of campaign donations he received immediately after his nomination.
In
Between Dec. 4, 2024, and the end of January 2025, the letters said, Long’s unsuccessful 2022 campaign for Senate received $165,000 in donations — after nearly two years without receiving any — and his leadership PAC received an additional $45,000.
The donations allowed Long to repay himself the $130,000 balance of a $250,000 loan he had personally made to his campaign back in 2022.
(Read more: “
The senators’ letters described the donations as “a highly unusual and almost immediate windfall,” and characterized many of the donors as being “involved in an allegedly fraudulent tax credit scheme.”
“The overlap between potential targets of IRS investigations and the list of recent donors heightens the potential for conflicts of interest and suggests that contributors to Mr. Long’s campaign may be seeking his help to undermine or avoid IRS scrutiny,” the letters said; adding, “This brazen attempt to curry favor with Mr. Long is not only unethical — it may also be illegal.”
The senators then warned, “There appears to be no legitimate rationale for these contributions to a long-defunct campaign other than to purchase Mr. Long’s goodwill should he be confirmed as the IRS commissioner,” before appending a list of approximately a dozen questions for the donors to answer.
The donations were originally discovered in early April by investigative news outlet
After Long left Congress in 2023, he worked for a tax consulting firm, including promoting the COVID-related Employee Retention Credit. In early January, Sen. Warren sent a letter to Long questioning his tax credentials and promotion of the ERC.
The IRS has run is now on its
Long’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled for this Tuesday, May 20.
EY accused of negligence at £2B trial over NMC Health
What Moody’s downgrade of U.S. credit rating means for your money
Klarna doubles losses in first quarter as IPO remains on hold
New 2023 K-1 instructions stir the CAMT pot for partnerships and corporations
The Essential Practice of Bank and Credit Card Statement Reconciliation
Are American progressives making themselves sad?
-
Personal Finance1 week agoReal estate and gold vs. stocks: Best long-term investment
-
Accounting1 week agoEssential Strategies for Maintaining Data Security in Modern Bookkeeping
-
Finance1 week agoAmerica failing its young investors, warns financial guru Ric Edelman
-
Economics6 days agoCPI inflation April 2025: Rate hits 2.3%
-
Economics7 days agoTariff receipts topped $16 billion in April, a record that helped cut the budget deficit
-
Finance1 week agoPowell may have a hard time avoiding Trump’s ‘Too Late’ label even as Fed chief does the right thing
-
Economics1 week agoChecks and Balance newsletter: The election of Pope Leo XIV goes beyond American politics
-
Economics6 days agoGerman business leaders tell new government: It’s time to deliver