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Thank goodness for the plaintiffs’ bar and class action lawsuits. And state attorneys general. Without them, there’d be very little justice yet – or compensation – for any of the mortgage-related fraud perpetrated during the real estate bubble.
There’s one thing about litigation that everyone agrees on. Anything can, and sometimes does, happen.
I’m sometimes accused of being too hard on one firm or another. But that criticism is unfair. I don’t have to be biased to find fault with any one of them at any point in time. I just have to watch what they do—and what they say.
In the last few weeks, I’ve written two very different stories about Deloitte. Both stories bothered me, but in different ways, so I was compelled to write about the firm both in unsympathetic and sympathetic terms. In the end, neither story says much about the state of the audit industry and the pre-2011 regulation of the audit firms.
It was a quiet almost-end to a sordid chapter in PwC’s history. Last week I wrote about PwC’s settlement of their Satyam class action lawsuits in New York for Forbes. Here’s some additional commentary and analysis, including links to all the stories I’ve written about the scandal since it broke in January 2009.
I was in Washington DC to attend the March 24 meeting of the new Standing Advisory Committee (SAG) of the new PCAOB. I was surprised twice by a report presented by the PCAOB’s Investor Advisory Group at last week’s meeting. First surprise: Chairman Doty was right. Good people are looking at the issue of auditor effectiveness, especially during the crisis. Second surprise: The report quoted me.
I wrote the post excerpted below for Forbes on February 25th, after seeing a great story by Jonathan Weil at Bloomberg on Citigroup.
Now the WSJ reports that, according to “sources”, the SEC and Department of Justice are having trouble making a case against Lehman executives and Ernst and Young in that case. I’m sure Anton [...]
Mainstream media, and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, are focused mainly on Ernst & Young as the auditor whipping boy of the financial crisis. That’s really by default not by design and is thinly justified. No one has given fly-over journalists anything on a silver platter that would draw in the rest. Give me a few minutes and I can make a case for PricewaterhouseCoopers as the one teetering on the edge of the abyss. Or KPMG. But today, let’s talk about Deloitte.
The Supreme Court of the State of Delaware issued an opinion on January 3rd, 2011 affirming the dismissal of claims against PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana derivative suit. PwC prevailed because the Delaware Supreme Court had little choice but to follow New York’s direction regarding in pari delicto, barring a strong argument otherwise from the plaintiffs.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued Ernst & Young over their involvement in the Lehman failure. EY was Lehman’s long time auditors and the firm is accused of “permitting Lehman to engage in an accounting fraud.” Hold on tight. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
 Francine McKenna (@retheauditors) has more than twenty-five years of experience in consulting and professional services including tenure at two Big 4 firms, both in the US and abroad. Look for my column, "Accounting Watchdog" at Forbes.com and "Accountable" at American Banker. For more information, click "About" at the bottom of this page. Your firm can sponsor this specialized news site. For more information contact Francine McKenna, fmckenna@mckennapartners.com |
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