Layoffs, Canceled Snacks, and the Rapture: These Are the Most-Read Stories of 2025

#10: Now EY Is Talking About Mercilessly Consolidating Its Global Units

The second-oldest story on this list, March 26’s headline about a global EY restructuring sure captured a lot of buzz. The article lede pretty much sums it up:

It’s not often we get to say Deloitte, EY, or PwC are following in KPMG’s footsteps but here we are. The phrase of the day is “global reorganization” and we should all be asking wtf is happening when two Big 4 firms are talking about doing it. In KPMG’s case, high level discussions are being had about merging together dozens of independent KPMG entities to “boost growth and prevent audit scandals” (per a FT source). In EY’s case, it appears the firm is planning to consolidate regions because business sucks.

You’ll see the story about KPMG merging together a bunch of its independent entities later on this list. Grant Thornton was very busy merging this year as well but despite our best efforts, none of the articles we wrote about GT’s mergers with itself made the list.

#9: Layoff Watch ’25: Still More Cuts to Come at PwC

Layoff stories took up three of the top ten spots on this list of most-read stories for 2025 and EY earned two of those slots. This story from November was actually a two-parter, starting with PwC laying off most if not all of its internal creative department.

This is what a tipster told us at that time about PwC’s “transformation” plans. (Transformation is a bad word in this case)

Current roadmap of “transformation” as they are calling it is within the next 24 months. Will be relying heavily on contractors and third party labor to fill business needs. Significantly limiting recruiting efforts in this timeframe.

The layoffs will continue until morale improves.

#8: CPA Firms Are No Longer Full of CPAs

TLDR The percentage of CPA license holders at CPA firms has dipped below 50% according to numbers crunched by IPA.

A little excerpt from this July article that ranked 8th most-read of 2025:

Just weeks after the profession got in a tizzy about private equity-owned firms telling staff to remove CPA from their email signatures and, in some cases, LinkedIn profiles, INSIDE Public Accounting has dropped figures on the average number of staff with CPAs at the hundreds of public accounting firms that report their data to IPA. Ready?

Between 2020 and 2024, the average percentage of staff holding CPA licenses across all firms dropped from 56.0 percent to 48.4 percent. This decline has occurred across all firm sizes, suggesting a systemic shift in both hiring practices and credentialing trends. Larger firms, which tend to offer a broader array of advisory and consulting services, report even lower CPA ratios, with only 41.5 percent of staff holding licenses in 2024.

Before we grab the pitchforks (they’re still cooling off from the last round of outrage, let’s give them a break), as IPA points out it’s worth recognizing that many firms have greatly expanded their offerings to areas that don’t necessarily require a CPA, like CAS. There’s an argument to be made about how the success of these offerings could be built on the trustworthiness and expertise of CPA holders providing these services but we don’t need to get into that today. If we want to be generous we could also suggest that part of this is firms adapting to declining CPA numbers and finding other ways to get their billable hours.

#7: Layoff Watch ’25: The Future Wasn’t Friendly to the Team EY Bought in 2023

“I am excited to welcome the team from Future Friendly to our Oceania practice and, in particular, to our growing business transformation team,” said Anthony Robinson, EY Financial Services Consulting Leader, Oceania in August 2023 when EY bought this boutique digital solutions consulting studio. “This is another great example of our ongoing commitment to providing leading innovation, customer experience and digital design support to our clients, and will significantly enhance our footprint in the region. Our strategic ambition is to grow the practice across Oceania, and the calibre of the team at Future Friendly will assist us in achieving this ambition, as we work together to build a better working world.”

In November of this year, many former Future Friendly staff found themselves among a batch of 90 people laid off from EY Australia.

#6: Breaking: BDO is Canceling the Holiday Party, Happy Hours, and Some Travel

BDO tightened the purse strings in August and announced that Christmas is CANCELED. Layoffs followed in audit and tax.

The good news is we heard from some of our BDO tipsters that individual team leaders reached into their own pockets to spread holiday cheer to their underlings this season. Take that, Grinch.

#5: Layoff Watch ’25: EY Dumps US-Based Executive Assistants to Replace Them With Offshore Talent

This story published in July started with a voicemail on the tipline:

EY did mass layoffs, almost all of their executive assistants in the United States, on Monday. They are offshoring them to Caribbean countries and South America countries where the talent works for a lot less. Very few American administrative assistants remain.

There are only a few hubs that they didn’t fire people at. All of the other admin assistant hubs have been fully transitioned to offshoring.

I believe it impacts hundreds of people. It was pretty cold and ruthless, mass Teams meetings. As you are probably well aware, this reflects the trend of [EY] doing that systematically with multiple departments.

PE-backed Grant Thornton axed a bunch of their assistants shortly after but, again, no one cares about GT hence why they aren’t officially on this list.

#4: KPMG to Merge With KPMG, KPMG, KPMG, KPMG, KPMG, KPMG…

Remember how we told you back at #10 that a KPMG/KPMG merger would be on this list? Yeah, here it is. Woo. Here’s the article blurb if anyone cares:

In May of 2024, KPMG announced that KPMGs UK and Switzerland would merge to form a $4.4 billion MechaKPMG. Said KPMG UK chief executive Jon Holt at the time, “This marks a historic moment for both firms. We will be stronger as one combined firm and together we will have the scale to significantly enhance our ability to deliver great outcomes for our clients both internationally and within our domestic markets. Merging brings huge benefits for our clients, our people, and our partnership and means we can now grow faster, be more profitable and invest together to create new services in a sustainable way.”

Then in August, KPMG Saudi Levant and KPMG Lower Gulf announced they too were merging. This seemed like unremarkable news on its own but as we noted at the time, the firm said this in the press release announcing the union: “The proposed integration is consistent with KPMG’s Global Collective Strategy, which includes the clustering of member firms across the network.” Between that and the UK/Switzerland merger, it seemed clear KPMG was cooking something up.

So it shouldn’t be too surprising that Financial Times reported this today:

KPMG bosses are demanding dozens of mergers among the national partnerships that make up the global accounting firm in a move they hope will boost growth and prevent audit scandals, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Ctrl+C/Ctrl+P in Photoshop really got a workout from us this year due to all these firm-merges-with-itself mergers and we fully expect the trend to continue in 2026.

#2: ‘CPA’ Is an Increasingly Dirty Word at PE-Owned Firms

If you click on any story in this list it should be this one for one reason: THE COMMENTS. Remember when our comment section used to be good? We ‘member.

A sampling of the comment section:

Pe sucks….the worst kind of people do these jobs…greedy…corporate raiders…

Seriously, CPAs should be embarrassed to work at PE firms. PE firms shouldn’t be embarrassed to have CPAs working for them.

If you are a CPA working at a PE firm, or an accounting firm owned by a PE firm, please know that you can do better. You can do more with your life. You can do good.

Comments are closed on that article but open on this one, you’re welcome to use the comment section to chime in if you missed the original article (or are just so passionate about the topic you feel the need to repeat yourself).

#1: KPMGers Act in a Normal Way When Informed Via Rambling Internal Email That the Rapture Is Coming: “Does This Mean Busy Season Is Off?”

Finally! We made it to #1. And it’s a good one!

In September, a very strange email from a low level associate in South Africa was blasted across almost the entire KPMG mail system with a warning: the Rapture is coming (not to be confused with The Rapture who already came). We’re all still here so either the warning was wrong or we just weren’t chosen.

The article is linked below if you want to check out the entire email and the 176-page PDF its author attached. Here’s the section from the email that explains what’s happening and how it pertains to public accounting:

Dear All

I am writing from South Africa

Please save the attached PDF quickly before it’s too late

I am a servant of Jesus Christ and I rather get fired than watch my colleagues go through this. Listen, World War 3 is coming and this entire entire economy is about to collapse (New York is likely to go down first). Jesus will take the Christians who are ready (filled with the Holy Spirit and prayed up) between 23-24 September 2025 (Feast of Trumpets) – this is what no one knows the day or hour means (these ready Christians are not taken by aliens). This is the “Rapture”,

The office in Johannesburg is under principalities and perhaps yours too:

the gods that this office represents. This finally made sense why all employees are always so focused on their screens more intensely, chasing deadlines, hooked on their laptops, competing about mundane things and all the more starving their souls because their souls are not fed, and most of them don’t realise what is happening because we have given our entire blood and energy to the Mammon system and to Baal. While we work so hard, we still encounter unfair and heartless treatment from people in leadership; every extra money paid is nothing compared to hours worked, every promotion is a mere deception, every competition among employees is only a rat race. Then I got it, no this is not about money. It’s a well-constructed system, taking our blood and energy in exchange for artificial peanuts. I don’t even get enough time for the things I love, like spending time reading the Word of God or with my family and friends. Missed birthdays, weddings, church meetings, marriage proposals, and phone calls because of the Beast System. Then I realised, the managers are also hurt, the partners are also hurt – they dedicate lots of time to get to where they are (blood and energy). I ponded on it and actually stopped judging everyone and myself. We are all victims of spells, sorcery and the kingdom of darkness. Our energy is feeding Baal on this alter that is our office. [Emphasis ours] And those that are devil worshipers and witches are also victims, because at the end of this story, Satan will give them nothing but eternal lake of fire. That’s just who he is. He is the opposite of Jesus Christ. My heart is in pain about what is coming to the world in the next seven years, I can’t sleep at night. I am always crying and wailing in the bathroom at work asking God to make people wake up and stop being deceived by Satan. God and Satan are not fiction, they are real Jesus is not some prophet, He is God. Snap out of the lies. Rapture of Christians who are ready is coming. World War 3 is coming. Massive depopulation is coming. Beasts (“aliens” = demons) are coming. Antichrist will be revealed and Muslims will worship him. Jesus is coming after this and will reign this world after 2032. Justice is coming.

She’s not wrong about the hours, we’ll give her that.