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Audit approach overview
Our audit approach will allow our client's accounting personnel to make the maximum contribution to the audit effort without compromising their ongoing responsibilities
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Annual and short period audit
At P&A Grant Thornton, we provide annual and short period financial statement audit services that go beyond the normal expectations of our clients. We believe strongly that our best work comes from combining outstanding technical expertise, knowledge and ability with exceptional client-focused service.
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Review engagement
A review involves limited investigation with a narrower scope than an audit, and is undertaken for the purpose of providing limited assurance that the management’s representations are in accordance with identified financial reporting standards. Our professionals recognize that in order to conduct a quality financial statement review, it is important to look beyond the accounting entries to the underlying activities and operations that give rise to them.
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Other Related Services
We make it a point to keep our clients abreast of the developments and updates relating to the growing complexities in the accounting world. We offer seminars and trainings on audit- and tax-related matters, such as updates on Accounting Standards, new pronouncements and Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) issuances, as well as other developments that affect our clients’ businesses.
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Tax advisory
With our knowledge of tax laws and audit procedures, we help safeguard the substantive and procedural rights of taxpayers and prevent unwarranted assessments.
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Tax compliance
We aim to minimize the impact of taxation, enabling you to maximize your potential savings and to expand your business.
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Corporate services
For clients that want to do business in the Philippines, we assist in determining the appropriate and tax-efficient operating business or investment vehicle and structure to address the objectives of the investor, as well as related incorporation issues.
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Tax education and advocacy
Our advocacy work focuses on clarifying the interpretation of laws and regulations, suggesting measures to increasingly ease tax compliance, and protecting taxpayer’s rights.
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Business risk services
Our business risk services cover a wide range of solutions that assist you in identifying, addressing and monitoring risks in your business. Such solutions include external quality assessments of your Internal Audit activities' conformance with standards as well as evaluating its readiness for such an external assessment.
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Business consulting services
Our business consulting services are aimed at addressing concerns in your operations, processes and systems. Using our extensive knowledge of various industries, we can take a close look at your business processes as we create solutions that can help you mitigate risks to meet your objectives, promote efficiency, and beef up controls.
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Transaction services
Transaction advisory includes all of our services specifically directed at assisting in investment, mergers and acquisitions, and financing transactions between and among businesses, lenders and governments. Such services include, among others, due diligence reviews, project feasibility studies, financial modelling, model audits and valuation.
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Forensic advisory
Our forensic advisory services include assessing your vulnerability to fraud and identifying fraud risk factors, and recommending practical solutions to eliminate the gaps. We also provide investigative services to detect and quantify fraud and corruption and to trace assets and data that may have been lost in a fraud event.
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Cyber advisory
Our focus is to help you identify and manage the cyber risks you might be facing within your organization. Our team can provide detailed, actionable insight that incorporates industry best practices and standards to strengthen your cybersecurity position and help you make informed decisions.
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ProActive Hotline
Providing support in preventing and detecting fraud by creating a safe and secure whistleblowing system to promote integrity and honesty in the organisation.
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Accounting services
At P&A Grant Thornton, we handle accounting services for several companies from a wide range of industries. Our approach is highly flexible. You may opt to outsource all your accounting functions, or pass on to us choice activities.
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Staff augmentation services
We offer Staff Augmentation services where our staff, under the direction and supervision of the company’s officers, perform accounting and accounting-related work.
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Payroll Processing
Payroll processing services are provided by P&A Grant Thornton Outsourcing Inc. More and more companies are beginning to realize the benefits of outsourcing their noncore activities, and the first to be outsourced is usually the payroll function. Payroll is easy to carve out from the rest of the business since it is usually independent of the other activities or functions within the Accounting Department.
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Our values
Grant Thornton prides itself on being a values-driven organisation and we have more than 38,500 people in over 130 countries who are passionately committed to these values.
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Global culture
Our people tell us that our global culture is one of the biggest attractions of a career with Grant Thornton.
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Learning & development
At Grant Thornton we believe learning and development opportunities allow you to perform at your best every day. And when you are at your best, we are the best at serving our clients
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Global talent mobility
One of the biggest attractions of a career with Grant Thornton is the opportunity to work on cross-border projects all over the world.
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Diversity
Diversity helps us meet the demands of a changing world. We value the fact that our people come from all walks of life and that this diversity of experience and perspective makes our organisation stronger as a result.
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In the community
Many Grant Thornton member firms provide a range of inspirational and generous services to the communities they serve.
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Behind the Numbers: People of P&A Grant Thornton
Discover the inspiring stories of the individuals who make up our vibrant community. From seasoned veterans to fresh faces, the Purple Tribe is a diverse team united by a shared passion.
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Fresh Graduates
Fresh Graduates
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Students
Whether you are starting your career as a graduate or school leaver, P&A Grant Thornton can give you a flying start. We are ambitious. Take the fact that we’re the world’s fastest-growing global accountancy organisation. For our people, that means access to a global organisation and the chance to collaborate with more than 40,000 colleagues around the world. And potentially work in different countries and experience other cultures.
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Experienced hires
P&A Grant Thornton offers something you can't find anywhere else. This is the opportunity to develop your ideas and thinking while having your efforts recognised from day one. We value the skills and knowledge you bring to Grant Thornton as an experienced professional and look forward to supporting you as you grow you career with our organisation.
Today is the fourth Corporate Governance forum organized by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) at the PICC. The last forum focused on good governance, anti- corruption, financial crimes and financial disclosures transparency, while the sessions today cover topics that, at first glance, may seem unrelated to corporate governance, such as cybersecurity, bank secrecy and the millennials.
It is refreshing that the SEC consistently keeps alive the discourse on corporate governance. This is very timely, especially since the Philippine SEC has recently assumed the chairmanship of the Asean Corporate.
Governance Initiative, previously held for five years by its Malaysian counterpart. This initiative, with the support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), has become quite important with capital market watchdogs through its annual assessment and ranking of Asean publicly listed companies and its publication of the Asean Corporate Governance Scorecard (ACGS).
Those who follow SEC pronouncements on corporate governance know that the governance-related rules and regulations issued in recent years are consistent with the learnings brought about by the
ACGS, which in turn is largely based on the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Principles of Corporate Governance. It is comforting that the country is moving toward international best practices in this area.
Just last month, the ADB and Asean Capital Markets Forum released the latest ACGS pertaining to assessments made in 2015. The ACGS evaluates the top public companies in five governance categories, based on the following weights: 10 percent for rights of the shareholders; 15 percent for equitable treatment of shareholders; 10 percent for role of stakeholders; 25 percent for disclosure and transparency; and 40 percent for responsibilities of the Board of Directors. The two major demands of corporate governance are transparent disclosure and the active role of the Board of Directors; both of these areas are prominent in the ACGS.
In this latest ACGS, the Philippines is one of the most improved in the consolidated performance of our top 100 public companies. In fact, we have the highest increase in mean score for the past four years—from a measly 48.90 back in 2012 to a commendable 73.09 for 2015.
A major contributor to the increase in ratings are the initiatives undertaken by the SEC, which revised corporate governance rules in the Philippines. To illustrate, of the 24-point increase in the country’s score over the past four years, about 16 points came from the last two governance categories: disclosure and transparency, and responsibilities of the Board of Directors. Both of these areas were significantly affected by the SEC’s new pronouncements since the ACGS began.
While this may be a cause for celebration, there are still a lot of things that need to be done to raise the scores in all categories. This is true not just for the Philippines, but even for our larger neighbors. Our latest score of 73.09 is now very close to Malaysia’s 76.91 and Singapore’s 78.14 (Thailand continues to lead the region with 87.53).
If further improving ratings is our goal, we can be assured that the SEC has the strategy to achieve this.
Of the five governance categories, responsibilities of the Board of Directors is the area where a lot of improvements can still be attained. We got only 26.51 points in this category out of the maximum possible rating of 40 in the latest report, which is based on the 2015 assessment. Since then, a lot of improvements were introduced by the SEC, and these are expected to impact our country’s future ACGS performance. To cite an example, the ACGS pointed out that the challenges for the Philippines include the few independent directors on the Board, and a lack of a nine-year term limit for independent directors and unlimited boards that an independent director can simultaneously sit on. All of these are now specifically addressed in the revised code of corporate governance issued less than a year ago. Though the new code is based on a “comply or explain” approach, let us hope that more public companies will opt for “voluntary” compliance rather than justify deviations from best practices.
What else can the SEC do to improve our ratings? One area that the SEC can look into are relatively smaller public companies. One of the concerns in the latest ACGS is that much of the improvement in the Philippines’ score was due to changes happening in the larger public companies, while the rest have yet to show similar improvements.
Highly effective governance systems take a lot of time to develop, and it requires sustained efforts from stakeholders to establish and hone. Now that additional rules are in place, the SEC and other regulators can now move to effective enforcement and compliance checking to ensure that all public companies support a highly robust corporate governance culture.
Renan Piamonte is a Risk Management partner head at P&A Grant Thornton. P&A Grant Thornton is one of the leading audit, tax, advisory and outsourcing firms in the Philippines, with 21 partners and over 850 staff members. For comments,please email Renan.Piamonte@ph.gt.com or pagrantthornton.marketscomm@ph.gt.com. Visit our Website: www.GrantThornton.com.ph; Twitter: pagrantthornton, and FB: P&A Grant Thornton.
As published in The Manila Times, dated 22 November 2017