Enterprise AI: Infrastructure and Governance

• SAP lost Cognite to Schneider Electric for 3.1 billion dollars and hit a 52 week low, yet its enterprise process knowledge remains hard to replicate
• Deloitte became the first Big Four firm to productize agent governance, launching a unified framework on Omnia as 79 percent of enterprises still lack mature governance
• Enterprise AI architecture is shifting toward trusted ERP data as the foundation, with commoditized models and specialized agents layered on top
• System of record data may soon carry its own access fees as it feeds agentic AI workflows
• Structured risk ontologies, not clean data, are the faster path to AI adoption in insurance underwriting, where 80 percent of data lake projects fail to deliver
• Cross-team disagreement over basic terms like revenue is increasingly a semantic layer problem that AI exposes rather than causes

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AI and the Consulting Shakeout

• Accenture's shares hit their lowest since 2017 after bookings fell to 19.3 billion dollars, a signal AI could break the consulting model
• Accenture has cut roughly 22,000 roles, McKinsey made its largest cuts since 2008, and graduate hiring fell 29 percent at KPMG, 18 percent at Deloitte and 11 percent at EY
• OpenAI's new Deployment Company embeds engineers inside clients, signaling delivery over advice
• Software and consulting firms are converging into organizational intelligence companies as advantage shifts from models to context and adoption
• EY-Parthenon marked its first year as a unified brand by adding 60-plus partners and 700 people across Europe West

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Tax and Trade in Flux

• A proposed US-China Board of Trade could ease tariffs on non-sensitive goods while keeping higher duties on security-sensitive ones
• New EU parcel fees took effect July 1, ending duty free entry for 4.6 billion sub-150 euro parcels a year, 91 percent from China, rising to full tariffs by 2028
• A new DOJ and DHS trade fraud guide frames compliance as an enterprise wide risk, expanding enforcement to civil and criminal action
• Switzerland reaffirmed a tax strategy built on Qualified Tax Incentives to stay competitive after the OECD global minimum tax
• IFRS 18 demands early preparation well ahead of its 2027 effective date given its retrospective restatement rules
• EY's 2026 Global Tax Policy Report frames tax complexity as a business wide challenge, not just a tax one

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Macro Outlook: CFOs, Banks and Geopolitics

• Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's testimony reinforced a price stability commitment over signaling a rate move, with the June dot plot split nine-nine on further hikes
• Deloitte's UK CFO Survey found 73 percent optimistic on AI's business impact and 93 percent expecting higher digital investment, with geopolitics the top external risk
• Strategy&'s Retail Banking Monitor found 2025 topline up 3 percent and profit up 6 percent, though gains may not survive fading rate support
• The Dutch CFO Survey found finance leaders balancing growth ambitions against geopolitical and supply chain risk
• India's Business Confidence Index found sentiment weakening on geopolitical tension and a weak monsoon
• FundForum discussions and EY's midyear Economic Outlook found wealth managers' AUM and M&A activity holding up despite slowing global growth

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Leadership and Talent in the AI Era

• Six years of disruption, from COVID-19 to AI investment, have reshaped audit careers beyond technical knowledge alone
• The OECD Employment Outlook flagged UK regional employment gaps as unusually persistent, with talent matching a bigger challenge than talent supply
• Andrew Forrest's Fortescue, targeting real zero by 2030 and saving roughly 1 billion dollars a year, was cited as linking decarbonization and AI to enterprise value
• A panel on AI's community impact raised the idea of AI dividends flowing to citizens, not just companies

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Industry Watch

• India added more than 300 Global Capability Centres in fiscal year 2026, nearly triple the prior pace, pushing the sector toward 100 billion dollars
• Microsoft's partner ecosystem logged 306 M&A deals since 2021, about 60 percent investor driven and concentrated in Dynamics 365 and security
• The Energy Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy pointed to accelerating electricity demand and diverging regional pathways
• Despite 860 climate finance policies in place, the OECD found 78 percent still focus on transparency while fossil fuel financing outpaces low carbon
• Only 7 percent of consumer companies have connected planning data and teams enough to decide together, per EY research after two decades of IBP investment
• KPMG was named a Horizon 3 Market Leader for SAP S/4HANA transformation focused on outcomes over go live

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Thanks to John Stenby, Kevin Zeng, Tanmay Hoshing, Diana Kearns-Manolatos, Rodney Coutinho, Rune Lykke-Kjeldsen, Hugo Raaijmakers, Hardeep Arora, Constantin M. Gall,   Omar Ali, Muhammad Ibrahim, Rt Hon Chloe Smith, Sean MacHale, Gaz Taher, Romal Shetty, Mateusz Pacholik, Patrick Schmucki, Chris Andrews, Valentino Koester and everyone else who contributed insights to this edition.

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