The Big Four’s year of layoffs
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2023
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
French immigration reforms put Emmanuel Macron’s leadership to the test, Pisa rankings show sharp decline in student attainment in maths and reading since 2018, India’s stock market is set to take Hong Kong’s spot among world’s largest, and Shohei Ohtani signs a record $700mn baseball contract with Los Angeles Dodgers.
Mentioned in this podcast:
UK students fall behind on core skills post-pandemic
EY to cut a further 150 UK jobs as Big Four firms grapple with waning demand
Shohei Ohtani signs record $700mn baseball contract with Los Angeles Dodgers
India’s stock market set to take Hong Kong’s spot among world’s largest
French immigration reforms put Emmanuel Macron’s leadership to the test
Credit: MLB.com
The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson, Kasia Broussalian and Marc Filippino. Additional help by Joanna Kao, Sam Giovinco, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva, Gavin Kallmann, and Zach St. Louis. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.0 | Learn more at equinore. |
| 0:10.0 | At equinore. UK. Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday |
| 0:16.4 | December 11th and this is your FT news briefing. French President |
| 0:22.2 | Emmanuel Macron faces an important test over immigration today. |
| 0:27.0 | And the big four accounting firms are contending with multiple rounds of layoffs this year. |
| 0:32.0 | This is internally very disruptive. It's not very good. with multiple rounds of layoffs this year. |
| 0:32.6 | This is internally very disruptive. |
| 0:34.4 | It's not very good for morale, of course. |
| 0:36.3 | So you want to be won and done, |
| 0:38.0 | and that's not how it's playing out. |
| 0:40.6 | Plus, fans of Major League Baseball got some huge news over the weekend. |
| 0:45.0 | I'm Joanna Gow, in for Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. It's a big moment for French President Emmanuel Macron. |
| 1:05.0 | Today, he will try to get lawmakers to vote on his long promised plans for immigration reform. |
| 1:11.0 | The draft law would tighten the asylum system, reduce the number of appeals that people can make, and require proficiency in French. |
| 1:19.0 | These are measures meant to appeal to the right-wing lawmakers and reflect hardening public opinion on immigration. |
| 1:26.1 | But critics say they would only result in small tweaks to current policy. |
| 1:30.5 | The proposed law was initially floated a year ago, but has been delayed multiple times. |
| 1:35.0 | Losing Monday's vote would be a huge embarrassment for McCrae. |
| 1:39.0 | He struggled to govern since his re-election last year. The big four accounting firms have been on a bit of a spree of layoffs. |
| 1:53.4 | Earlier this month, EY announced it was cutting another 150 jobs in the UK. |
| 1:59.1 | Deloitte, KPMG, and PWC have cut hundreds of jobs this year too. |
... |
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