Paycuts, plunging profits & more…Keep up with what’s been happening this week in our accountancy news round-up…

Grant Thornton’s UK audit profits plunged in 2019

In results published Tuesday, Grant Thornton said it made a profit of £1million from audits in the 18 months to January, down from £13 million for the preceding 12 months.

Coronavirus: KPMG partners face 25% pay cut as bonuses get slashed

Hundreds of partners at KPMG, the big four accountancy firm, are facing pay cuts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds as it seeks to conserve cash because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Accountancy firms weigh up reputational risk of furloughing staff

The heads of the UK’s six largest accounting firms staged a virtual meeting on Friday to discuss the risk to their reputations of accepting government funds for furloughing potentially thousands of employees, according to three people with knowledge of the discussion.

Accountancy firm criticises ‘alarmist’ prediction of 800,000 coronavirus insolvencies

Restructuring specialists at accountancy firm RSM said media reports that 800,000 to 1m UK businesses could collapse as a result of the coronavirus are ‘alarmist at best’.

FRC fines KPMG £700,000 for poor audit

The FRC has fined KPMG UK £700,000 and reprimanded KPMG UK’s former senior partner for Manchester, Nicola Quayle for a “failure to apply sufficient professionalism scepticism” in the audit of an unnamed company in the financial year 2015/16.

Coronavirus: ‘Challenger’ audit firm Grant Thornton slashes pay

One of main challenges to the ‘big four’ audit firms has asked its 4,500 UK employees to volunteer for drastic pay cuts of face a substantial redundancy programme.