The Big 4 And Globalization

Most of what’s been written about the financial crisis and firms that were forcibly acquired, bailed out, or that failed tends to focus on “fair value” as the feckless culprit.What are the auditors’ obligations with regard to clients’ fair value measurements and disclosures? Auditors do not determine fair values. Instead, their role is to, “test management’s fair value measurements and disclosures.” But that obligation is broader than just taking the word of the “masters of the universe.”

“If not, why not…” We’re talking about the auditors’ failure to be a force either before, during, or after the financial crisis…Only legally required compliance keeps us walking like dizzy children through in this hall of mirrors, never reaching the exit and sunshine.

When I ask, “Where were the auditors?” and decry the fact that “they weren’t there,” it’s not due to some unreasonable, unfair focus on the most milquetoast of potential culprits. I bang this drum because the auditors should have been there, as a last stop, where the buck should have stopped, as gatekeepers, watchdogs, advocates, and the last bastion of standards and expected values shareholders can look to.
But they weren’t.

You Can Quote Me On That

Alex Howard’s story discusses the impact of the Supreme Court case re: the PCOAB on IT compliance. Article contains several quotes from me and the rest of the great story, including tons of resources to catch up on this issue .

“Francine McKenna, a sharp-eyed observer of Big Four machinations on her re: The Auditorsblog site, offered a trans-Atlantic view of the deal: “With everything going on here, Deloitte is probably in the worst shape of the Big Four. Deloitte lost the most clients through failures and bailouts and are really hurting, with people being laid off [...]

Francine McKenna, an ex-PWC director and a fierce critic of the “big four” accounting firms (PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young), believes the Satyam issue raises fundamental questions of oversight. She says: “It’s hard to know the extent to which there was complicity between the auditors and senior management or whether it was plain [...]

Your Career

Somehow, they manage to make accounting look sexy. It starts when they roll into campus career fairs with their nicely tailored suits, bundles of pens and tote bags to give away, even informational cards which can be planted in a pot and sprout as flowers. You’re not in Kansas anymore! This is the big leagues, and guess what? You made it!

Deloitte should be careful what they wish for. The Flanagan insider trading litigation has forced them to reveal their woefully inadequate policies and procedures regarding independence compliance. While trying to placate their clients who were dragged through the mud on this and exact revenge against their own leadership-level partner, a pillar of the Chicago social and philanthropic community, they’ve admitted to allowing Flanagan to breach their standards more than 300 times and to get away with it.

Professor David Albrecht writes: If you don’t yet spend much time reading blogs, I recommend that you start. I think many blogs are good enough to merit required reading status in your courses.

Where I've Been

I have some exciting appearances, speeches and conferences coming up this spring. I thought I would let you know where I’ll be, whom I’ll be with and what I’ll be doing.

I often forget that not everyone who reads my posts also follows me every day on Twitter. I often Tweet breaking news, my reviews and intermittent musing on the days (and often the evening’s) events. Even if I am not posting on this site, I am always working in the background. I was fortunate to be mentioned kindly in two different blogs recently.

Time to get back in the game after a fairly quiet, low-key holiday period. However, much has been going on behind the scenes at re: The Auditors HQ…

Writing for Others

My new column is up @Going Concern.com
“…I don’t envy today’s professors trying to teach the old-fashioned accounting skills in the electronic environment – closing checklists, regular balance sheet reconciliations, journal entry sign-offs, backup documentation requirements, managerial review of financial statements, and proper reviews and approvals of estimates and analytics. These are the Sarbanes-Oxley and the [...]

My new column is up @Going Concern.
Most don’t wear stilettos, although Cynthia Cooper is fairly attractive for a blond. Harry Markopolos, the Madoff “hero” whose new book is out is being called a whistleblower. I do not see him really warming up to that label or really warming up at all. He did admit that, [...]

My new column is posted @Going Concern.
There’s no profession more conflicted about employee retention versus alumni relations than the auditors. On the one hand, the largest audit firms have well-oiled recruiting machines.
Their uncanny ability to identify and sway candidates early is rivaled only by professional baseball’s success at finding talented Dominicans still swinging stalks of [...]

The Case Against The Auditors

The big lawsuits – the ones that accuse the firms of accounting malpractice or various federal securities law violations – have been chronicled ad infinitum. The accounting industry’s response to these threats is to ask for liability caps. As if we don’t have enough moral hazard in the financial system with “too big to fail,” the auditors want to institutionalize their insulation from accountability to their clients, the shareholders, with a policy of “too few to pay for their mistakes.”

I’ve never heard a specific explanation for how PwC could preside over a long running dispute between two of its most important global clients, a dispute that was material to at least one of them, obviously, that had the attention of its highest level partners, and not force a resolution based on consistent application of accounting standards sooner. I’ve been writing almost as long as I’ve been writing here that PwC should resign as AIG’s auditor. Is it not enough that PwC was clearly torn between two clients who held enormous financial sway and lost its independence and objectivity along the way?

Maybe PwC didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell to be a truly independent, objective advocate for shareholders by forcing a true and fair presentation, in all material respects, of the financial position of either AIG or Goldman Sachs and the results of their operations and their cash flows in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America. But is there a truly good excuse for PwC to not have been a preemptive strike force, a beacon, an early warning system for shareholders of the financial Armageddon we faced? They had longstanding, thorough, perfect knowledge of both sets of financial statements.

Food for Thought

Mainstream journalism is in desperate need of radical visionaries, yet the industry continues to be led by people who are part of the problem rather than a source for the solution. Is there any other business where failure and myopia is so frequently and handsomely rewarded? If ever there was a single industry that illustrates the concept behind The Peter Principle, today’s mainstream media is it.

The Top Searches these past few days. Any doubt what readers are worried about?

We appreciate your interest in the work of the PCAOB.

The Big 4 And Consulting

Protiviti is currently soliciting feedback for its new Sarbanes-Oxley Insight Survey.

The results of this survey promise to provide valuable and important insight into the current state of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for all types of organizations.

My friend Roopen Roy’s most recent column for MyDigitalFC.com is entitled, “Why Mergers In FirmsFall Apart.” Roopen Roy is the Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting, India.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOx) made law what is best practice for all public companies or companies that issue public debt. That includes “smaller” companies.