Warning: Coarse language, because we may get a lot of snow in Chicago but we’re no snowflakes. Last week I went to an American Bankers Association Conference for bank government relations executives. I wrote a story about some things that Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (and also a cabinet member […]
I’ve updated the post to point to some recent news about PwC and banks that failed in Ukraine and Spain… I returned to Washington D.C. and my job as a journalist at MarketWatch in late June, after almost three months as a Journalist in Residence at the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. My fellowship deliverable, in exchange for the opportunity to study with the researchers, was three posts for the Center’s Pro-Market blog on the state of the audit industry.
The last time anyone attempted to “modernize” auditor independence rules it was the Securities and Exchange Commission, in 2000, before the Enron failure and Arthur Andersen’s demise, as a result of the growing concern that firms increasing focus on consulting was distracting them for their core purpose, auditing. The Big Four firms are now opportunistically lobbying to go back in time, before Enron, when the industry was self-regulated and mostly left alone, able to have as many conflicts of interest as their powerful public clients would allow.
Word got out early that the SEC would approve IEX’s application to become a stock exchange on Friday the 17th. As usual, the leak traveled to the big media outlets earlier that week and then the rest of us waited for announcement from the SEC all day.
I could not resist writing at Medium.com about the teen trader who recently duped a journalist from New York magazine into believing he had made $72 million trading gold and other alternative assets. It’s not like auditors don’t get fooled every day by fake documents.
Did you know that each of the Big Four audit firms and some of the next tier also run SEC-registered broker-dealers? You’ll never guess who audits them.
I’m part of a group effort at Medium.com called “Bull Market”. The first two columns are about taxes—the inversionist avoidance kind and one corporation’s horrible allergy to them.
I have two articles in the University of Chicago Booth Capital Ideas Magazine Summer 2014 issue. One is about bank monitoring of private company financials and the other is about bank stress test disclosure. Their cover story, “Think you’re not a racist?” is also worth a close read.
I’ve recently published two pieces for Chicago Booth Capital Ideas Blog on stock options backdating and bank stress test disclosure. Take a look!
Two new pieces, on ethics and investor protection, at Al Jazeera America Online.
I’m writing for the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Capital Ideas magazine and blog now, too. The purpose is to highlight faculty research.
I have been named a finalist for UCLA’s Gerald Loeb Awards for my work in Forbes magazine last year. I’m a “professional who writes” but also a professional writer and a journalist. You’ve been warned.
