The 125 graduates are drawn from 15 from fifteen countries including China, India, Kenya, Russia and South Africa as well as the UK.

The majority studied here, though academically, they are a mixed bag. Over 60% of the group qualified in subjects outside of the traditional degree disciplines such as accounting, business and economics. That's no bad thing either.

Some 45% are female (which PwC says outperforms the sector’s average female application rate of 41%) and 31% are from an ethnic minority background. This, the firm boasts, exceeds the UK university population figures.

The firm is also tapping into the UK’s 'hidden' graduate talent pool of those who wait to get a proper job - 43% are aged 25 or over, with an average age of 24.4 (which is up on last year).

The fact that the firm has an April intake (September is its norm) is down to work / life balance issues – ‘a growing trend for recently qualified graduates wanting to travel or take time out, without postponing their career for a year’.

It’s the sort of broad cross section we would all want to see joining the profession. I do hope that in a decade’s time when the cream of this crop rises to the top (at PwC or elsewhere) it is equally representative. I always prefer to be optimistic about these things though the stats are less encouraging.

According to the Financial Reporting Council’s most recent analysis, the proportion of female members of the main UK institutes has risen steadily from 24% in 2000 to 29% in 2005. Yet the percentage of female students has been stable since 2000 at the considerably higher level of 48%. That’s a big drop-off that’s not easily explained.

The 2007 Accountancy Age Top 50 painted an equally grim picture. It revealed that on average women accounted for less than10% of partners within the firms and partners from ethnic minority groups (of either sex) only made up 5.9% of the total.

Not good. At this point I could thunder that too little has changed in the last decade to be overly optimistic. Instead I'll say that the PwC stats do make me hopeful.

Now she has received another letter from CitiCards offering her a Citi Platinum MasterCard. A classic case of blanket marketing that gives the appearance that the bank’s left hand knows not what its right is doing.

The caustic reply to this follow-up adopts a similar tone:

'Citibank has proven itself to be financially irresponsible on a huge scale, and I would not like my reputation to be tarnished by association. If you cannot afford to repay the £4 you owe me, I shall write it off as a bad debt, grateful that it is not $18.1 billion.'

Good knock-about stuff, I'm sure you'll agree. Now it seems this FD is not alone in taking such a principled stance.

Another former FD and chief executive tells me how he was left fuming as he neared the end of his mortgage recently, normally a cause for celebration.

His bank wants £750 to return the deeds to his house. His preferred solution is different.

Keep charging him 1p a month to keep the mortgage going indefinitely. And the bank can keep the deeds.

If any other finance directors have grievances about their personal finances I'm happy to air them publicly. Just as long as they are entertaining.

Sir Jack Shaw, convenor of the committee which produced the report said many of the research reports generated since 1988 appeared to come from academics looking to do little more than improve their research rating.

ICAS president Isobel Sharp weighed in, warning: 'Too many lightweight, piecemeal, poorly researched and inadequately tested outpourings damage the profession and the public.’

IASB chairman Sir David Tweedie added: 'It’s often a PR job and often as interesting as a book on Antarctic television personalities of the 18th century.’

Is this the case? Here is a fairly random selection from the last few weeks:

Companies seek an edge through engaged employees (PwC)

The Boys in the Bubble: Searching for Intangible Value in Internet Stocks (ICAS)

Ernst & Young’s 2008 Car Dealership Report

I have to say they appear to have a point, though used car salesmen may disagree.

What do you think?

The firms hope that by bringing national practices closer together they can offer a seamless service worldwide and deal better with the argument that the quality they offer not the same the world over. (Remember Grant Thornton and Parmalat? Remember PwC in Japan?)

And reward? Well, improve service and the rewards will surely follow, runs the thinking.

To be a single practice in the truest sense, however, requires the pooling of profit and liaibility.

Now very clever and very expensive lawyers will always be able to find reasons for sharing (or, conversely, localising) liability in the event of a claim on the firm.

But it is up to the firms themselves to share the spoils in a way athat would define them as truly global entities.

We asked E&Y today whether partners within the Europe, Middle East, India and Africa Area would share profits.

We were told: ‘The EMEIA area will operate as a single unit, led by a single area executive team with one shared strategy and sharing of costs and investments/ All 3,300 partners across EMEIA will have a common approach to performance evaluation and compensation.’

That sounds like a ‘no’, then.

It was declining, the bank said, for one or more of the following reasons: -

• 'You are not making your regular minimum monthly payment/s by the due date/s on your statement every month
• You are not using your card within your agreed credit limit
• We appraise your financial circumstances using credit scoring. Unfortunately at this time you are not eligible for credit from Citi Cards
• We appraise your financial circumstances using data from credit reference agency Experian Limited. Unfortunately at this time you are not eligible for credit from Citi Cards.'

Standard issue stuff. The reply, however, is the kind of letter we all wished we would send.

After soberly pointing out that the account had in fact been closed on 19th January 2005, the letter delivers a thorough kebabing:

‘Since you have been so informative in giving a multiple choice of reasons why you cannot issue me with a replacement card, I feel it only fair if I reply in similar vein as to why I would not request a credit card from Citigroup.

'Please be advised that I would not enter into any financial business arrangement with Citigroup due to one, or more, of the following reasons:

• Your valuation of sub prime exposure of $55 billion at 30th September 2007 was wildly optimistic and evidence of reckless and uninformed use of shareholder’s funds.
• Your subsequent write down of $18.1 billion evidenced the folly of your flawed business plan.
• Your correspondence to me shows that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
• Your CEO, Charles Prince, resigned after presiding over the largest losses ever incurred by Citigroup.
• Your “fast and efficient” call centre is not.

'I apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you. All decisions on credit cards are subject to a number of factors. These decisions are based upon my experience over a number of years that include a thorough review of your circumstances.

'My procedures are under continuous review but it is doubtful that I would re-apply for a credit card with Citi Cards within the foreseeable future.'

And the final coup de grace?

'I note that a £4.00 credit balance on my account was transferred to suspense on 28th June 2006. Please repay this amount to me.'

I’m sure we all look forward to Citi Card’s reply.

In his book Smith describes one of his first jobs, at the docks in Salford as a shipping clerk. 'I was 16,' he writes. 'People were great; I was working with dockers and shipping agencies.' Ships berthed from around the world and it was a 'free and easy' time.

You already sensed it would end happily though. And it didn't, with new management appointed. 'Things were changing. Three-day week, candles on your desk ... One day there's no boats from Nigeria. All of a sudden it's machine parts from Germany. We're part of the Common Market now, so the dockers were mooning about, all miserable, blaming I don't know who.' He goes on:

'I remember having a distinct feeling that this was all going to collapse around me. One minute I'm in the office doing imports and exports, going to work in my shirt and pants, normal-like, the next there's these tw*ts there in Rod Stewart suits, running the f**king company.

'But they had this old accountant there, about 70. I'll never forget him: Trevor. He was like Rumpole. Smoked a pipe. He'd been in the Royal Navy, and he was always telling me: "Get out, Mark, get out now. You're too intelligent for this job."

'He used to follow me to the toilet, asking me why I was still there. He was looking after me.'

With accountants normally blamed for all sorts of corporate ills (particularly, I have to say, in the entertainment, sport and media industries) it was touching to read one, Trevor, being held up as a beacon. Especially by one such as Smith, who notoriously has so little time for so many.

Another recruitment consultant, Badenoch & Clark, says accountants’ basic salaries rose by an average of 3.7% in 2007.

Qualified staff working in accountancy practices saw bigger increases – a hardly stellar 4% – a figure that trails other industry sectors.

In some service lines, however,I expect there are bigger changes to come.

The talk in the consulting industry, for instance, is that in trying to build their consultancy arms back up in the last few years, the Big Four have been paying up to a third more than traditional consultancies.

There are, I'm told too many people in firms earning between £500,000 and £700,000 for jobs that would probably bag them £300,000 to £500,000 elsewhere. Will the next few months see a shake-out?

Some 53 of the top 200 US law have blogs - up 36% on a year earlier, according to LexBlog, and between them they run 110 blogs in total (up 49%).

There seems to be no comprehensive list of accountancy firms on either side of the pond, though Michelle Golden's list is rated as about the most comprehensive out there. She identifies 38 accounting firm blogs.

In the UK these include: Mercer & Hole which runs a tax and insolvency blog, Cumulo Accountancy and Taxation, RowePro, PwC which runs a handful, Dennis Howlett, and BDO's Jeremy Newman's whose blog is perhaps the most celebrated of all as it comes from one so senior.

She misses Richard Murphy, Holden Associates, ICAEW chief executive Michael Izza, the Small Practice Accountant and John Tate.

So the UK list does reach double figures but I'd hope and expect for more over the year ahead.

We may look to a list of our own. It would be a very visible measure of the extent to which professionals are using online to engage with clients - new and existing alike.

Feel free to bombard me with links.

Richard Collier-Keywood (head of tax), Richard Sexton (head of assurance) and Ian Powell (head of advisory) are all in the frame, with Glyn Barker - effectively Kieran Poynter's number 2 already - the fourth nominee.

I could credit myself with amazing foresight but in truth this a pretty predicatble (if demonstratbly able) group.

It's a shame that there is no Mark Otty (in spirit, not in name) on the shortlist. PwC has opted to follow KPMG's lead in going for experience (John Griffiths Jones) rather than skipping a generation as Ernst & Young's did with Otty.

All four candidates have a window of four weeks to set out their manifesto and vision , with the opportunity to hold a series of meetings with partners.

It sounds like in the current climate partners want stability, which would make Barker favourite with perhaps Collier Keywood a sound each-way bet.

It’s been a few years since Ernst & Young moved into its shiny HQ at More London next to the mayor’s office on the south bank.

In 2010, 6,000 PricewaterhouseCoopers staff will join them.

A year earlier KPMG will take up a £260m, 999-year lease on offices in Canary Wharf.

And only last month BDO Stoy Hayward all but completed its move into new offices on Baker Street – all the way from No. 8 to No. 55.

I read now that two firms in Manchester are set to join in the merry-go-round.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers is apparently looking at 3 Hardman Square, while BDO is also looking to move.

The relative increases in square footage are interesting and perhaps indicate something more significant. According to Cairns, PwC is looking to up its tenancy from 40,000 sq ft to 70,000 sq ft. BDO’s ambitions are more impressive: it’s looking to increase its occupation from 20,000 sq ft of space in Commercial Buildings on Cross Street to 60,000 sq ft. A threefold increase, no less.

I do wonder whether this will be the last round of moves of this kind. I get the sense that for many people-heavy industries like professional services, home-working will become more of a default position than a staff ‘benefit’.