NewsAccounting

8 February 2018

Facebook banscryptocurrency-related ads

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Facebook announced this month that it is introducing further countermeasures against scams by banning all advertise-ments promoting cryptocurrency businesses. The move is to prevent ads for financial products and services that are “frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices,” Rob Leathern, a Facebook product management director, wrote in a blog post.

Over recent months cryptocurrency phishing scams have appeared on the social network, such as one fraudulently promoting bitcoin mining rigs and linking

unsuspecting customers to a false website where their money is stolen.

All Facebook advertisements, regardless of whether they are on behalf of legitimate businesses, will be prevented from promoting anything involving cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, initial coin offerings, or binary options.

In addition to banning cryptocurrency-related ads on Facebook’s core platform, the company’s other services like Instagram and Audience Network, an ad provider for third-party apps, will also face the same restrictions. “This policy

is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices,” wrote Leathern. “We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”

Facebook’s move comes at a volatile time for crypto markets. The value of Bitcoin has plummeted from its all-time high of US$17,900 per unit on 15 December 2017; but it still commands the highest price per unit compared with any other cryptocurrency, and is currently valued at over US$8,700 each as of 12 February.

War for talent in Asia continuesDemand for accountants with a balance of strong technical skills and soft skills in Asia Pacific and South-East Asia will persist through 2018, InTheBlack reported this month. Accountants are in high demand in emerging economies, such as Malaysia and Vietnam, noted Pauline Ho, Assurance Partner at PwC Malaysia. “The war for talent is very real, and I hear the same comment regardless of where I travel to within South-East Asia,” she told the magazine. “The talent crunch has been a constant challenge for this region, espe-cially with the outflow of experienced professionals to mature markets like Australia and the United Kingdom.” According to a survey by recruiting company Hudson in October 2017, 90 percent of employers in Singapore, 75 percent of those in Mainland China and 42 percent in Hong Kong planned to recruit more accountants in the first half of 2018.

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Firms accused of “feasting” on CarillionBritish Members of Parliament have accused the Big Four accounting firms of “feasting on what was soon to become a carcass,” for the fees they charged the failing construction and management contractor Carillion, reported The Guardian. Evidence provided by the firms shows that they issued an aggregate bill totalling approximately £72 million over 10 years of work for Carillion. Rachel Reeves MP, Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee, questioned why Carillion’s auditor KPMG signed off the company’s last accounts before a profit warning in July 2017 that saw a slash in the value of key contracts by £845 million. Carillion is undergoing liquidation after exhausting all lines of credit and acquiring £900 million in debt.

Deloitte’s new tech research centre opens Deloitte has launched a fully virtual hub without a physical address, which will offer resources to any of the firm’s technology, media or telecommunications clients. The Deloitte Centre for Technology, Media and Telecommunications is the firm’s latest initiative to help clients identify effective technology-driven business models and the newest technologies and trends, reported Accounting Today. “In today’s disruptive climate, tech, media and telecom companies can’t afford to chart the wrong path,” Jeff Loucks, Executive Director of Deloitte Services, said in a statement. “Our research and insights help simplify complex issues so business executives can spot hidden opportunities and make timely, informed and confident choices.”

Lee White appointed as Executive Director of IFRSThe Trustees of the IFRS Foundation have appointed Lee White as its new Executive Director to manage the organization’s day-to-day operations. He succeeds Yael Almog, who departed the foundation in 2017 after five years of service. White, who has accumu-lated over 30 years of experience in the private sector and public authorities of Australia, was the inaugural Chief Executive Officer of the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CAANZ), and has played a key role in uniting the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia and the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants together to form CAANZ. White will begin his new role in April.

February 2018 9

A world of numbers

The year-on-year percentage increase in identity fraud in the

United States in 2017, due to cyber criminals’ increasing proficiency at cracking into mobile-phones and

email accounts, reported The Wall Street Journal.

The year-on-year percentage decrease in the total value of

merger and acquisition activity by Chinese companies in 2017, according to PwC’s M&A 2017

Review and 2018 Outlook . “While deals are down by both value and

volume compared to a bumper 2016, the trend is still strongly

upward on a five-year view,” said PwC China and Hong Kong

Transaction Services Leader David Brown.

8%

11%

The amount in foreign cash repatriated to the United States by Cisco Systems Inc. after the

new law to reduce the corporate tax rate took effect in December

2017. Cisco has announced plans to spend much of the

newly repatriated cash on share buybacks and dividends, reported

The Wall Street Journal.

US$67billion

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Trump advocates online sales taxes According to United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, President Donald Trump “feels strongly” that the country should permit the collection of state taxes on Internet purchases, reported Accounting Today. Despite a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that says out-of-state retailers cannot collect sales taxes if they do not have a physical presence, Trump has previously said that e-commerce giants like Amazon.com Inc. do “great damage to taxpaying retailers” by not being subject to the same taxes as their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Brent Gardner, Chief Government Affairs Officer of Americans for Prosperity, an influential conservative lobby group, argued that such a move would affect everyday items and “disproportionately impact those who can least afford it.”

Jenner causes Snapchat shares to dropSnapchat’s shares dropped by 7 percent, approximately US$1.5 billion loss in market value, on 22 February after reality-TV star Kylie Jenner criticized the usefulness of the social network and asked her 24.5 million followers on Twitter the day before: “Does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore?” The incident highlights the inadequacies of traditional accounting for technology companies, according to Reuters. “Celebrity users definitely create value, or destroy it, as Jenner just did at Snap, but their potential influence doesn’t appear in a company’s accounts,” reported the newswire. Jenner’s tweet followed a widely criticized redesign of Snapchat’s interface.

New AML watchdog launched in the U.K.As part of a range of reforms to strengthen anti-money laundering (AML) oversight in the United Kingdom, the British government has established the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision (OPBAS). Based within the Financial Conduct Authority, OPBAS oversees the accounting and legal professional bodies that act as the country’s AML supervisors, and has the powers to investigate and penalize. The new office will not, however, directly monitor the member businesses that these professional bodies supervise. “This sends a clear message to criminals and terrorists that their dirty money is not welcome here,” said Economic Secretary to the Treasury John Glen.

PwC launches workforces engagement appPwC has released a new app called Digital Workforce Transformation, to engage workers digitally to solve problems. The app uses a four-stage approach to assess each user’s digital fluency and to develop a curated digital training regiment based on relevant topics like cybersecurity, blockchain and user experience. It is part of the firm’s larger initiative to promote digital culture within various organizations, reported Accounting Today. According to PwC surveys, businesses believe that unskilled teams, lack of new data and technology integration and use of obsolete technology to be the primary causes for their lack of digital innovation. Digital Workforce Transformation is available to any company, and users can sign up for a free demonstration before purchasing the service.

Kylie Jenner

Donald Trump

February 2018 11

AFP