It would be unprofessional of me to not post at least one Davos-related comment this week, so here is someone else's.

It sounds gimmicky but there is some substance behind KPMG's initiative to persuade its people to swap taxi journeys for tube trips. It is setting itself a modest target, as the partner responsible for the initiative told AccountancyAge.com yesterday.

I've written a comment piece for tomorrow's AccountancyAge which I've reproduced below in its unedited format.

For years firms have been complaining to me about the money they invest training young accountants only to see them poached by big City banks dangling the not unattractive carrot of a massive salary. Sarbox was the most recent driver but there have been no shortage of others.

So it was nice to see one of the accountancy gatekeepers turn poacher yesterday when Ernst & Young prised Fleur Bothwick from investment bank Lehman Brothers. Bothwick was European director of diversity at Lehman Brothers and will take on a similar role at E&Y.

The Israeli accountant general has complained to police over anonymous death threats he has received, according to reports. Yaron Zalika has been told to improve security around his home.

According to one website, interestingly, 'the investigative branch of the police has decided to assign the case to the national financial crime investigation unit'.

It's shocking, frightening stuff. And apparently not the first time it's happened.

Last month, Haaretz.com says, Zalika complained that 'a coalition of beneficiaries illegally helping themselves to state funds has declared an active war against us, and they have been joined by powerful individuals'.

Really, I should already have posted this column I wrote for Accountancy Age last week. But as it has been eliciting comment on TaxHack, my colleague Alex Hawkes's blog, I believe it's still worth putting up. I'd love to hear further comments and may use it as the basis for a column next month. Anyway here goes:

I thought I'd start the New Year with a change in style for this column. Rather than pass superficial judgment on other people's analysis I thought I'd crunch some numbers of my own. And I'll begin by resolving the tricky question: which Big Four firm is the best remunerating for partners and for employees? The results, buried in each of the firm's 2006 annual reviews, surprised me.

Let's go in reverse Top 50 order. Ernst &Young's average profit per partner was £686,000, up 27% on 2005. Average staff remuneration rose 6% to £49,101.

At KPMG, average partner profits for the year were £556,000, up 14%. Employee salaries and bonuses rose 1% to £56,647.

Deloitte has for a long time been the most lucrative firm in which to hold a partnership. And this year's performance was again impressive. Average partner profits were £785,000, up 8%. Employees saw their remuneration rise to £50,688, up 5%.

At PricewaterhouseCoopers, the UK's largest firm, average profit per partner reached £870,000, up a staggering 42% on 2005. Its £50,482 average salary was up 2.2%.

So Deloitte partners lose their top spot. And as PwC is fond of pointing out, it is harder for a number one to grow faster so those rocketing partner profits are all the more impressive.

Meanwhile though salaries at Deloitte, E&Y and PwC are much of a muchness, KPMG's staff are way out in front. No wonder the firm has been boasting how it paid £80m in bonuses to staff in 2006.

Rather than an interesting but insignificant navel gazing exercise all this struck me as significant on two fronts. One, it mirrors wider economic trends. Late last year The Work Foundation revealed well-paying managerial and professional jobs have grown faster than any other sort of work in the UK over the last decade – so you would expect remuneration to rise accordingly.

And let's not beat around the bush, it also reflects the widening gap between executive and staff pay elsewhere. A survey by The Guardian and  the Reward Technology Forum late last year showed that directors' pay in the 2005 financial year rose 28% across the FTSE 100, in contrast to a rise in average earnings of 3.7%. That's important too: it means clients are unlikely to object to the firms' remuneration strategies.

More than though all this gives is an answer to that perennial question: What on earth could persuade the next generation of accountants to take on the risks and responsibilities of partnership?

If anybody knows about financial crime it's Jim Gee, the fraud specialist who has just joined KPMG. His new partners will be feeling mighty pleased with themselves for securing his services: Gee is not just an expert in fighting public sector fraud, he pretty much defined the discipline.

I first came across him when he was at the London borough of Islington council in the early 1990s. He moved to Haringey but it was at Lambeth that he really made his mark.

For at least a decade, Lambeth had been a hotbed of political infighting (it wasn't unknown for hard-left councillors to spit at their Tory foe across the corridor), financial mis-management was rife and there appeared to be little appetite to get to grips with the situation.

The turnaround had stated under (now Lord) Herman Ouseley in 1990, but it was under Gee that the chronic fraud which the borough was suffering was brought under something approaching control. Losses were cut by £30m a year and, with so much of the problem on the inside, 100 staff resigned or were dismissed.

He moved to the NHS in 1998 where he was no less effective. As head the new NHS counter fraud service he oversaw a unit that benefited the exchequer to the tune of almost £300m.

So what can the honorary CIPFA member offer KPMG? Well, bringing in a lot of money will be part of his role, of course. But much more interesting than that is the fact that he has been tasked with applying public sector lessons to private companies.

KPMG's willingness to look widely for solutions shows how serious the fraud threat to companies has become, a threat that technology is increasing all the time. (KPMG's fraud business increased by 33% last year).

More than that though, it makes me question successive governments' belief that all public sector management techniques should be held in lower regard than those in the private sector.

There are successes in Whitehall and town halls- from which the private sector could learn lessons - as Gee's experience highlights.

I've been accused of reading too much into incidental announcements before so I won't dwell unduly upon this morning's results announcement from upmarket accountancy recruitment specialist Michael Page.

(In September I suggested that the wheels were coming off the accountancy gravy train because of negative comments by another recruiter, Hays.)

So news that gross UK profits at Michael Page are expected to rise 20% this year should give us cause for optimism. More importantly, the company says there are 'good levels of activity continuing across all disciplines and all regions of the UK'.

It's the time of year when honours are bestowed (arise Sir Mike Rake) and we at Accountancy Age have dished out a few of our own this week in our 2007 Financial Power List.

First place goes to Ed Balls, the brains behind the PM-in-waiting. The next chancellor? Maybe. But he will certainly continue to pull many of the Treasury's most important strings when, figuratively speaking, Gordon Brown moves from number 11 to number 10.

Perhaps more intersting is the ranking of the Big Four senior partners. KPMG's John Griffith Jones leads the pack at number 3, streets ahead of Deloitte's John Connolly at 21, PwC's Kieran Poynter at 27 (beaten, as usual, by one of his 'junior' partners Peter Wyman at number 5) and E&Y's Mark Otty at 40. It wasn't always thus.

Last year's number 1, HMRC director general Dave Hartnett slips to 7 (just as tax power seems to be shifting to Europe).

Click here for this week's issue featuring the list.

The empire strikes back is the slightly odd title of today's report from right-wing think tank Reform on the future of the NHS. Among its many recommendations is one that should stand out to Accountancy Age readers.

'The immediate aim should be to settle the deficit problem in 2007-08,' it argues. 'A “new start” would involve: a writing-off of all deficits; and the introduction of rigorous financial discipline so that all organisations must stay in surplus or balance.'

Accusations of less than rigorous financial discipline within the NHS have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. Often they are with foundation, sometimes they're not.

A BBC documentary to be screened next week will add to the pressure. In it, Sir Gerry Robinson, the former chairman of Granada and Allied Domecq, is critical of health service managers and will fuel fresh controversy over whether the extra billions earmarked for healthcare (in 2010 the NHS in England will spend well over £100bn per year) are being used effectively or mismanaged.

Sir Gerry's involvement is interesting. On the face of it, it comes across as a classic (and simple, and cheap) reality TV option. But it's not so divorced from the real world.

I gather another of the UK's best-known businessmen was once been approached for a formal health service reforming role. He said he might be interested subject to a few simple conditions being met. He wanted to be free of political interference, he wanted the ability to hire and fire senior managers and and he wanted agreement for a double-digit percentage cut in staff numbers across the service.

Of course the conditions were not agreed to. And of course it was never pursued.