Bank regulators should start hiring the consultants that are responding to bank regulatory sanctions, consent decrees and NPA/DPA legal orders directly, and also strictly monitor them. It’s time to change for regulators to change their approach before another waste of time, money and public trust occurs.
British MP Margaret Hodge grilled Kevin Nicholson, of PwC’s UK tax practice, in a Parliament Public Accounts Committee hearing on Monday. You know you’re on your “back foot” when the first thing out of your mouth has to be a denial that you lied under oath. More details about PwC’s tax avoidance scheme for audit client and US government owned AIG.
My latest column at Medium.com responds to PwC’s #LuxLeaks defenses: Illegal docs, legal advice. I also raise the obvious auditor independence issues which no one else is reporting.
The NYDFS PwC investigation discovered several emails that Benjamin Lawsky, the Superintendent of Financial Services for New York, characterized Monday as examples of a consultant going along with a “whitewash”.
The August issue of The Bottom Line in Canada includes quite a few quotes and a nice color photo of me in a story about the wave of new consulting firm acquisitions by Big Four audit firms all over the world.
An ugly lawsuit filed by Mobile Monitor Technologies LLC against PwC and HP could be an excellent example of what Monadnock’s Mark O’Connor referred to in a recent post here: Advisory work that auditors perform can present an untenable conflict in performing their primary role, and public duty to the capital markets, as auditors.
This Monadnock Research Note offers an in-depth analysis of organic growth and strategic M&A in non-audit services for the Big Four audit firms, highlighting the growing risks associated with an increasing proportion of advisory relative to audit services at Big Four firms – and the conflict risk that this unique mix of services presents.
If we can’t trust journalists to sort out who’s telling the truth and who’s just selling us, who can we trust?
There are five big auditor independence issues that space prevented a full discussion of yesterday and that are not on the agenda of the PCAOB SAG meeting this week. My hope is that regulators, policy makers and other interested parties will start talking about these issues, too, while I am in DC this week.
PwC says it will acquire Booz. Don’t count on the SEC or the PCAOB to stop PwC and its audit firm competitors from “slipping back” into the old conflicts between audit and consulting. Is anyone guarding the guardians?
Crain’s Chicago Business and journalist Steve Strahler have produced a series on the reemergence of the consulting arms of the Big Four audit firms with a particular focus on the Midwest and Chicago firm leadership. I’m quoted and there’s a nice photo.
What are the ethics of an “ethics and compliance organization” canceling a speaker because sponsors complain? Welcome to the world of trade conference pay-to-play and “money talks, critical speakers walk”.
