Barrister gets 3 years for £628k VAT fraud, accountant hotelier disqualified for failing to pay taxes, director of Christmas shop fails to present accounting records

BDO has appointed Mark Hunt as the head of its financial services practice. Hunt was a partner at KPMG from 1994 to 2007 before joining BDO where he has been a senior forensic and dispute advisory partner

ICAEW is challenging the view that adopting quotas is the most effective way of bringing about greater diversity on boards, saying that when it comes to encouraging wider views and perspectives at the top level in companies there should be no rules.

Peter Townsend is retiring as chairman of East Midlands firm Duncan & Toplis 47 years after he first joined the Grantham office as a school leaver. Townsend, who was the firm’s managing partner for eight years from 2004, will continue in his role as managing director of sister company Castlegate Financial Management.

North west accountancy firm Moore and Smalley has acquired long-established local Southport practice, Hollows Davies Crane, in a move that extends its geographic reach to cover south Lancashire and Merseyside

Baker Tilly has restructured of the firm’s regional offices following last year’s acquisition of RSM Tenon, creating a new single North East practice which will more than double the size of the firm’s business in the region

CFOs are increasingly bullish about prospects for growth in the UK and eurozone, with confidence levels hitting a six-year high, according to research from Deloitte

BDO has announced that Richard Rose is to take over as lead partner for the West Midlands in charge of the firm’s 265-strong team in Birmingham. He replaces Mark Anslow who is retiring from the partnership to take on the role of CEO at client firm, Pemberstone Ventures. Rose is a senior tax partner who has been with the firm for nine years and is BDO’s national tax spokesperson.

Registration is now open for this year’s National Tax & Accountancy Conference from Wolters Kluwer (formerly the CCH UK Conference), which will focus on the trends, techniques and technologies for running successful tax and accounting businesses

Andrew Hickman has been appointed head of the OECD’s transfer pricing unit at the Centre for Tax Policy and Administration. He will take up the role in May 2014 when he leaves his current role at KPMG in the UK.

Bumper bonuses in the City to acquistions at SKS Accounting, Channel 4's HMRC fly-on-the-wall documentary and the dangers of negative employee references as highlighted in Jessemey case

A London accountant disqualified as director over failure to pay £147k tax bill for his firm while a Torquay hotelier messes up the books and fails to account for £200k hole