Lofty goals like EY’s Vision 2020 serve a promotional purpose to attract top talent, and create the rationalization for promises of vast internal opportunities to keep top performers engaged. But unintended consequences would likely foreclose any real possibility that the $50 billion aspect of EY’s 2020 strategic plan could be executed as currently conceived.
PwC has an ongoing independence conflict in performing the Ally/ResCap independent foreclosure review. This conflict is disturbing on two fronts.
Here’s a compilation – updated – with links for the columns/posts I’ve written about the mortgage servicer foreclosure reviews mandated by the April 2011 SEC/Fed consent orders, the April 2012 Attorneys General mortgage settlement and the intersection of the two regulatory actions.
It’s easy to forget, with all the propaganda being published by major media, why these Fed/OCC consent decrees were issued in the first place. The fact that a borrower may be in default does not negate the overwhelming evidence that court cases have provided that banks proceeded fraudulently and illegally in some foreclosures and looted those borrowers and institutional investors in mortgage securities by charging fraudulent and illegal fees in the process.
Here’s the thing…The perception of auditor independence is as important, or maybe even more important, than the fact of auditor independence. This is not new.
How do you connect with your target audience? Game-changing technologies influence how you communicate with the young (and the not-so-young) social media-savvy crowd.
I was at New York University’s Vincent C. Ross Institute of Accounting Research to speak on a panel that included Paul Volcker, Bob Herz and a lawyer representing PwC and EY. The Ross Roundtable on the “Impact of Reemergence of Consulting Practices at Major Audit Firms” was well attended.
Here’s the background on SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors, a cloud-based HR application.
The Huron Consulting case is a great one if you would like to see examples of almost everything that’s wrong with the audit industry, the regulation of the industry and “reforms” like Sarbanes-Oxley.
Reuters has a story out today entitled, “Regulators tighten up bank in-house checks.”
Unfortunately it does nothing, in fact it distorts, the role of internal audit, external audit and the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors in a bank.
A column I wrote for American Banker on March 5, 2012, “What Little We Know About Foreclosure Reviews Is Troubling”, was mentioned during the recent House Financial Services Subcommittee hearing on issues facing the accounting and auditing industry.
My column today at American Banker is about the PCAOB’s auditor rotation and auditor independence concept release and its impact on banks. My favorite lines are…
