Week Two

I’ve been wanting to update my blog (really) – and I wish I have an excuse for not doing so… but in truth, I’ve just been a lazy bum spending my lonely nights vegetating in front of the TV. Even though work has been fairly chilled, I still feel exhausted when I get home – [...]

I’ll give you a job if you’ll give me a job.

KIDDING! I started my articles this week. You might be wondering why I’m not buried waist deep in donkey work – the truth is, none has been assigned to me. I spent the morning doing admin related things. Being part of a global organisation meant a tonne of conformity. I had to complete online courses [...]

Break, etc.

Back in undergrad, I used to hear all sorts of horror stories about how atrocious postgrad was going to be. So horrible that it made me look forward to articles where I must spend weekends at dimly-lit warehouses counting boxes and bean-cans to earn my keep. I didn’t believe much of it as I figured [...]

New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, has filed a lawsuit against Ernst & Young (one of the Big Four auditing firms) over the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The civil case is built on claims of professional negligence and it seeks damages equalling all the audit fees E&Y has earned from Lehman ($150m) plus an unspecified [...]

BEP Days 4 and 5

The last 2 days of BEP went by in a jiff. Thursday kicked off with a Q & A session with the auditing clerks, and in between numerous questions, we managed to gauge a salary bracket out of them… and boy, was it depressing! The starting net salary for a first year clerk is just [...]

BEP Day 3

This is going to be a relatively short post because I am utterly exhausted – not so much by the day’s events, but rather by the 60 minutes I spent in traffic when the trip should have taken 15. Watching the numerous taxis speed past in the yellow lines didn’t help improve my mood either. [...]

BEP Day 2

It started off as a pretty chilled day with a series of talks from the various departments within Ernst & Young. Some interesting pointers to note: The IT Department: – A place where the computer geeks congregate and their services include (but are not limited to): free technical support and the occasional provision of eye-candy. [...]

BEP Day 1

Today was the first of Ernst & Young’s Business Experience Programme, and “suitably impressed” would have been an understatement. Having now experienced the cultures and ethos of two of the Big Four auditing firms, I must admit E&Y has made a far better impression than the other. While the offices looked roughly the same, it [...]