Liability Caps – Page 2 – Francine McKenna

BDO International – Yellow Card or Red Flag?

May 20, 2009/29 Comments/in BDO, Latest, Liability Caps, Pure Content

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know that I pretty much stick to discussing the largest 4 audit/accounting firms. This is for practical reasons – keeping my sanity in dealing with so much information – and to be realistic. Put the three next tier firms in the US together and they don’t equal either the critical mass in terms of experience and infrastructure nor the client/revenue base of any one of the Big 4. They will never, either individually or collectively, be able to step up and absorb the detritus from another Big 4 firm failure, either in the US or out.

That doesn’t mean the next tier don’t serve the clients they have well. Mostly. Just means that the next tier are not ready to play in the same pitch as Ronaldo.

A Question Of Value – Why So Much Ado?

October 21, 2008/4 Comments/in Fair Value, Liability Caps, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sarbanes-Oxley

What we have we prize not to the worthWhiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,Why, then we rack the value, then we findThe virtue that possession would not show usWhiles it was ours. William Shakespeare (1564–1616), British dramatist, poet. Friar Francis, in Much Ado About Nothing, act 4, sc. 1, l. 218-22. We […]

Deloitte and Litigation – Ya Win Some, Ya Lose Some

June 20, 2008/3 Comments/in Deloitte, Grant Thornton, Liability Caps, Parmalat, Subprime

Deloitte is in the news for some significant litigation issues. First the winner. This ruling, I think, will have a big impact on the auditor subprime cases to come. Many of these cases, when it comes to the auditors liability, will be based on whether auditors should have been more diligent, thorough, and hard on […]

Approved! All Together Now – EY To Be One Firm (Except US, Of Course)

June 3, 2008/4 Comments/in Audit Quality, Deloitte, EY, Liability Caps, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Ernst & Young Completes Groundbreaking Globalization Move EY Partners Overwhelmingly Approve the Creation of EMEIA LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ernst & Young today announces that its partners across Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa have overwhelmingly approved the proposed integration of its country practices into a single EMEIA Area. The new Area will be […]

Recession? What Recession?

April 28, 2008/in Liability Caps

Image Source We’ve raced through the five stages of grief over whether or not the US and, by default, the rest of the world, is in a recession in lightening quick time. Wasn’t it just a month or two ago that the point was being debated, denied? Now the media and other sages, at […]

Sunday News Roundup

April 27, 2008/in EY, Liability Caps, Societe Generale

The WSJ does have a story about Jérôme Kerviel’s new job, but still no story about Ernst & Young’s merger move in the rest of the world outside the US. And here I thought I had to post at 11:00 pm on a Sunday night to beat the US business media to the story. I guess […]

KPMG UK’s Griffith-Jones – "Trust Me"

March 25, 2008/1 Comment/in KPMG, Liability Caps

Picture Source Undoubtedly, no one checked the quotes first. John Griffith-Jones is one slick dude. But even he must know that it’s best not to rub it in his clients’ faces. Mr. Griffith-Jones believes that his clients are so, so afraid of another auditor collapse, they are willing to give away their right to […]

Another Perspective On "Global Networks"

March 19, 2008/in Liability Caps

I love to get mail from other firms that focus on professional services firms as an industry. This note came from Michael Roch at Kerma Partners in response to my post about the audit firms’ “global networks.” Dear Francine, …I am a London-based partner of Kerma Partners; we are a strategy consulting firm to international […]

ACAP -The Acronym Tells The Story

March 18, 2008/6 Comments/in Bear Stearns, Liability Caps, PCAOB

Picture Source On March 13, 2008, the U.S. Treasury Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession (ACAP), co-chaired by former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, Jr. and former SEC Chief Accountant Don Nicolaisen, met to discuss the preliminary recommendations of its subcommittees on human capital, [audit] firm structure and finances, and concentration and competition. Edith Orenstein was […]