Why MAC / Vision, mission & values

Anyone can list values. Fewer can name what they cost.

What Muhammad Abbas & Co. is for, what it commits to, and what it gives up to hold those commitments.

Integrity, excellence and client focus appear on the website of almost every firm in this profession, including firms that behave nothing like one another. Words that everyone claims tell you nothing. So each of the five values below is written with the thing it costs us attached — and if we are ever failing to live up to one, you should be able to point at it.

Talk to a Partner Where you can check this →

IWhere we are going

Vision

A partner-led firm delivering the full range of professional services a business needs — assurance, tax, accounting, corporate, advisory, technology and sustainability, in Pakistan and internationally — without ever compromising the ethical standards the profession is built on.

Two halves of that sentence are in tension, and the tension is deliberate.

"The full range" means we intend to be a firm a client does not have to leave. Most problems do not arrive labelled by discipline: a control weakness becomes a systems question, a tax exposure becomes a corporate law question, a valuation judgement becomes a reporting one. Breadth is what stops those falling between firms.

"Without ever compromising" is the constraint on that ambition. Breadth creates independence risk — the more services a firm sells to a client, the more ways it can end up reviewing its own work.

Our vision includes the limit as well as the ambition, because a vision that only describes growth is a business plan, not a vision.

The full range, in practice — eleven service lines under one accountability

AssuranceAudit, review, ICFR & SOX

TaxFederal & provincial, transfer pricing

AccountingBookkeeping, payroll, outsourced CFO

CorporateSECP filings & secretarial

AdvisoryDeals, valuation, risk & forensic

TechnologyERP, IT governance, cybersecurity

SustainabilityIFRS S1 & S2, ESG assurance

InternationalGulf, UK, US & Canada

The independence boundary, in full →

IIWhat we do about it

Mission

To deliver professional services of a quality our clients can rely on, holding to every requirement of professional ethics — confidentiality, independence and competence — in every engagement, without exception.

"Without exception" is the operative phrase, and the one that costs something.

Every firm intends to apply its standards. The question is what happens under pressure: a deadline that cannot be met properly, a client who wants a position we cannot defend, an engagement we are not competent to take but would like the fee from.

A mission statement is only worth reading if it tells you which way the firm goes at that moment.

We go the same way every time, and the operating controls that make that possible are published rather than asserted.

The seven controls applied to every engagement →

III — The line underneath everything

We add value to your business.

This is the sentence the firm was founded on, and it is not decoration. It functions as a test.

Before a deliverable leaves this office, the question asked is not "does this meet the requirement" but "has the client been left better off than a compliant minimum would have left them".

An audit that finds nothing worth telling you is not automatically a good audit. A tax return that is merely accurate has not necessarily done its job.

The test does not always change the deliverable — sometimes compliance is the whole of what is needed. But it changes what we look for while we are looking, and over a long relationship that difference compounds.

IVHow we work

Five values, and what each one costs us

Values are easy to list. These are the ones we have actually turned work down over.

Integrity

We will tell you when the answer is one you did not want. On a contested tax position, on a valuation that will not support the number you need, on a control weakness that has to go in the report.

What it costs

Engagements, occasionally. A firm that only ever agrees with its clients is selling reassurance, and reassurance is worth nothing when it is tested.

Excellence

Work is reviewed before it leaves, at a standard set by ICAP's Quality Control Review rather than by what a client will accept. Independent review found that standard Satisfactory.

What it costs

Time, on every file. Second-reviewer discipline is slower than single-reviewer work, and it is the reason errors do not survive to the client.

Client focus

Your engagement is staffed by people who understand your sector and led by someone you can reach directly. We measure ourselves on whether clients return for a second service line.

What it costs

Scale. Partner-led delivery does not leverage the way a pyramid does. We accept a lower ceiling on firm size for a higher floor on the seniority any client receives.

Innovation

Modern systems, properly implemented — ERP, cloud, IFRS 9 modelling, sustainability reporting frameworks, data-driven audit approaches.

What it costs

Continuous investment in training and tooling a firm could simply decline to make. A practice working the way it worked in 2015 is cheaper to run and more expensive to be a client of.

Partnership

We are interested in the relationship after the file closes. Long-term clients get advice that anticipates their year rather than reacting to it.

What it costs

Short-term revenue. Telling a client a piece of work is unnecessary this year is a fee foregone — and the reason they call before deciding next year.

VNot just words

Where you can check this

A values page is unfalsifiable on its own. These are the places on this site where the same commitments appear as specifics you can inspect.

Let's work together

Hold us to it.

If any of the above does not match your experience of working with us, say so — to the engagement lead, to the partner, or to the Managing Partner. The route is published, and it is short.

Talk to a Partner How we handle complaints →

Anyone can list values. Fewer can name what they cost.

Vision

Mission

We add value to your business.

Five values, and what each one costs us

Integrity

Excellence

Client focus

Innovation

Partnership

Where you can check this

The seven controls applied to every engagement

What independent review examined

How an engagement runs, and how we price it

Who does your work

Hold us to it.