Kpmg Consulting Inc

KPMG Consulting Inc. said it would buy some assets of the European consulting business held by its onetime parent for $685 million. The unit to be purchased includes the German, Swiss and Austrian units of KPMG, which is a part of the accounting firm KPMG International. McLean, Va.-based KPMG Consulting spun off last year from KPMG International, when accounting firms came under pressure in the United States to separate their accounting and consulting businesses.

A criminal case against KPMG relating to alleged tax fraud has been dropped because the accounting firm complied with terms of an agreement with the government, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. KPMG had agreed in August 2005 to pay $456 million, accept an outside monitor and admit to wrongdoing in resolving a federal investigation into questionable tax shelters. The deferred prosecution agreement expired Dec. 31. U.S.

KPMG Consulting Inc. filed Friday for a $1-billion initial public offering that would break new ground for efforts by the world's biggest accounting firms to branch into more-profitable work advising companies about their businesses and technology. KPMG Consulting, the advisory business of accounting firm KPMG, is based in McLean, Va., among the cluster of high-technology businesses in Washington's northern Virginia suburbs.

Former KPMG partners accused of creating bogus tax shelters are suing the firm for legal fees, after a judge ruled that prosecutors wrongly pressured the firm to cut off those fees. In a civil complaint, the 16 former partners are asking U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan to direct KPMG to pay their past and future legal bills in the case.

* KPMG Consulting Inc. said it will fire as many as 550 people in the U.S. and Canada, or about 5% of its work force, as demand for its consulting services declines. The company said the weakness predominated in the financial services market during the end of the first quarter. KPMG Consulting, which went public in February, said the layoffs will result in a charge of $20 million for the current quarter. * * Starbucks Corp.

KPMG Consulting Inc. agreed to bring on board 140 partners and 1,400 workers from the U.S. consulting arm of troubled rival Arthur Andersen in a deal worth about $63 million. KPMG, based in McLean, Va., said it expects the latest deal to add $65 million to revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2003. KPMG posted revenue of $2.9 billion in fiscal 2001, which ended last June 30. The move falls under a plan KPMG announced in May to acquire up to 23 independent Andersen consulting units.

KPMG Consulting Inc. knowingly misled CarsDirect.com about untested customer-tracking software that has cost the online auto store more than $50 million, CarsDirect.com said in a lawsuit. The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, offers a look at closely held CarsDirect.com, which dismissed 90 of its 750 employees two weeks ago. CarsDirect said KPMG's actions have "substantially impaired" its ability to meet customer demand and have caused "significant operating losses."

Former KPMG partners accused of creating bogus tax shelters are suing the firm for legal fees, after a judge ruled that prosecutors wrongly pressured the firm to cut off those fees. In a civil complaint, the 16 former partners are asking U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan to direct KPMG to pay their past and future legal bills in the case.

U.S. regulators have accused accounting firm KPMG of stalling an Internal Revenue Service probe by hiding the full extent of its role in creating dubious tax shelters for clients. The Justice Department said in a filing in federal court in Washington that KPMG delayed handing over documents and hid its tax shelter activities by refusing to register potentially abusive tax shelters with the IRS.

A criminal case against KPMG relating to alleged tax fraud has been dropped because the accounting firm complied with terms of an agreement with the government, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. KPMG had agreed in August 2005 to pay $456 million, accept an outside monitor and admit to wrongdoing in resolving a federal investigation into questionable tax shelters. The deferred prosecution agreement expired Dec. 31. U.S.

KPMG agreed Wednesday to pay $10 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges of improper conduct while auditing Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. The SEC said the settlement was the largest ever obtained from an accounting firm. The commission also said it sanctioned two former KPMG partners, a current partner and a current senior manager for improper conduct related to revenue overstatements from 1999 to 2002 by Gemstar, publisher of TV Guide magazine.

Accounting firm KPMG and a Belgian affiliate agreed Thursday to pay $115 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit claiming the companies failed in their audit of Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products, which later collapsed. In the 1990s, Lernout & Hauspie was recognized as a world leader in the software that recognizes human speech and turns it into computer text. But the Belgian company, with U.S. operations in Burlington, Mass.

In 1994, California regulators began investigating the accounting firm that had audited Orange County as it slid into the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. It took eight years and $9 million for the state Board of Accountancy to discipline KPMG. The board has an annual budget of $10 million and 56 employees; the accounting giant earned $12 billion last year and employs nearly 90,000 people.

A federal judge Tuesday ordered Big Four accounting firm KPMG to identify participants in certain tax shelters and produce documents sought by the U.S. government. U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan granted a motion sought by the government to force KPMG to comply with nine Internal Revenue Service summonses issued from January to May 2002 in connection with a wide-ranging probe of tax shelters. "We're reviewing the order and opinion of the court," said Tim Connolly, a spokesman for KPMG.

Hollinger Inc., the company that Conrad Black uses to control his newspaper empire, said its auditor, KPMG, resigned after the company's board refused to make management changes the firm requested. Daniel Colson also resigned as a director and as vice chairman to devote attention to Hollinger's main unit, newspaper publisher Hollinger International Inc., which said last month that it was exploring a sale.

U.S. regulators have accused accounting firm KPMG of stalling an Internal Revenue Service probe by hiding the full extent of its role in creating dubious tax shelters for clients. The Justice Department said in a filing in federal court in Washington that KPMG delayed handing over documents and hid its tax shelter activities by refusing to register potentially abusive tax shelters with the IRS.

One of the largest accounting firms promoted dubious charitable deductions and complicated transactions to generate phony paper losses for clients, say Senate investigators who spent a year unwinding four tax products that KPMG sold to more than 350 individuals in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The firm says it no longer offers the tax strategies.

U.S. corporations and the accounting and law firms that advise them have invented complex and illegal schemes to avoid taxes with no fear the Internal Revenue Service will stop them, a Senate panel heard Tuesday. Former employees of jeans maker Levi Strauss & Co. and accountants at KPMG said they had been fired or disciplined for objecting to allegedly illegal activity. An anonymous witness testified behind a screen with his voice distorted, telling how U.S.

Tax shelters sold by accounting firm KPMG cost the Treasury at least $1.4 billion while netting the firm $124 million, a Senate subcommittee report said Tuesday. KPMG said that the tax shelters were not illegal but that it had stopped offering them. But senators urged a crackdown on promoters of abusive tax shelters after hearing the findings and testimony about how the "paper tiger" Internal Revenue Service was losing the war against tax shelters.

One of the largest accounting firms promoted dubious charitable deductions and complicated transactions to generate phony paper losses for clients, say Senate investigators who spent a year unwinding four tax products that KPMG sold to more than 350 individuals in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The firm says it no longer offers the tax strategies.