‘INCREASED FDIS WITH ANTI-GRAFT DRIVE’
RSM believes move will raise investors’ confidence
hub in Asean,” he said.
This development will also benefit RSM Malaysia, a member of the world’s sixth-largest tax and advisory firm RSM International which boasts a network in more than 120 countries.
“We are seeing significant inbounds in referrals from European and American firms looking to set up offices in Asia, and Malaysia is ideal given its central lofirms cation in Asean, cost-efficiency as well as bilingual and welltrained staff that are perfect for regional work,” said Teo.
RSM Malaysia senior partner Yong Kam Fei said in the United States, businesses that used to be handled by the “Big 4” are now being handled by RSM International.
The Big 4 refers to the world’s four largest accounting — Ernst & Young, Deloitte & Touche, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Recently, KPMG and PwC were fined £2.1 million (RM11.2 million) and £10 million, respectively, by the United Kingdom’s audit watchdog, Financial Reporting Council, for misconduct. “An important trend we see now is that more referrals in the mid-tier corporate market in the US are going to RSM International instead of the Big 4. These midtier corporates have yearly revenues of between US$50 million and US$500 million (RM266 million and RM2.67 billion) and are looking to expand beyond the US.
“This is fantastic for us at RSM Malaysia as the outbound referrals would reach us, given that Malaysia is one of the group’s key markets in Asia Pacific. We are looking out for the trend and we expect that the outbound referrals from RSM International to RSM Malaysia will be significant next year and beyond.”
RSM Asia Pacific regional leader Neil Hough said technological disruptions would be the biggest challenge for the group.
“Technology is a huge disruptor to our business, but instead of avoiding it we are fully embracing it. We now incorporate artificial intelligence and big data harvesting into our processes.
“The only challenge we see now is not being able to move as fast as the market but we are handling it by employing many data scientists and cybersecurity experts,” he said.