AccountancyAge.com weekly news focus: Practice

Deloitte & Touche in Birmingham jointly led the transaction announced this morning in which the Phoenix consortium has aquired Rover Group from BMW.

One of the Deloittes team, Maghsoud Einollahi, said: ‘This is a fantastic outcome for the Midlands. The advice to Phoenix was provided solely by Midlands-based professionals. The Deloittes team worked day and night to deliver the deal.’ A more detailed story on the deal will appear on AccountancyAge.com later this morning.

AccountancyAge.com has already covered the accounting and finance details in the Rover saga extensively, for example looking at the impact of the differing UK and German accounting standards on the deal.

You can find more stories by using the words BMW, Alchemy, Phoenix or Rover in our keyword search facility.

The so-called dress-down culture appears to be taking hold on the profession. Big Five firm Ernst & Young has now announced a decision to extend its ‘flexible dress code’ throughout the UK from one day a week to five days a week, effective from 1 May 2000.

For many employees however, such rulings just mean more expense because they have to go out and buy a new wardrobe of clothes which are not suits, but which are more formal than the clothes they would wear at home or out and about. No jeans, T-shirts and trainers – a ‘flexible business dress with the emphasis on smart and comfortable clothes’ is the order of the day at E&Y. For some a suit may be a cheaper and more comfortable option than an unfamiliar set of smart chinos and semi-formal open-necked shirts.

Don’t forget to visit AccountancyAge.com every day for the latest stories as they are breaking. Our superb keyword search facility allows you to look up articles going as far back as 1996 on a huge range of topics – excellent for research or just finding the stories on topics you are interested in.