McKenna At Medium: Two New Columns For the Bull Market Collection
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.
Posts
Auditor Independence: Another Case of Misplaced Loyalty
/2 Comments/in Independence, PCAOB, Pure Content, Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC, The Case Against The AuditorsRyan Adams testified on behalf of PwC in an important court case. How can PwC be independent of Adam’s employer Marin Software, and Adams, the Financial Reporting Director at this newly public PwC-audited client company, if he’s testifying on PwC’s behalf in litigation that could impact PwC’s business model in California and, perhaps, nationally?
Big Four Takeovers Raise Concerns: McKenna Featured In The Bottom Line
/in The Big 4 And ConsultingThe 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.
Auditors and the Financial Crisis: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?
/4 Comments/in Pure Content, The Case Against The AuditorsThis is the text of my speech for the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics Conference last Friday. The theme of this year conference was “The Institutional Foundation of Capitalism”. Our special session was entitled ‘The New Financial Architecture after Financial Crisis’.
PwC, And HP, Sued By Mobile Monitor Technologies LLC For Theft of Trade Secrets
/2 Comments/in Latest, Pure Content, The Big 4 And ConsultingAn 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.
All The Auditors Are Above Average: Jay Hanson Allergic To “Audit Failure”
/8 Comments/in Pure Content, The Case Against The AuditorsShould audit and auditor failure be solely defined by identified material misstatements that result in restatements, and internal control failures? I don’t think so but Jay Hanson, PCAOB Board member, said so recently.
A Need for Transparency In Financial Staffing: A Guest Post From Dan Gaffney
/in Food for ThoughtAccording to Freelancers Union, almost one-third of the American workforce is independent. That’s nearly 42 million people and growing. The staffing industry, which should support the wave of new freelancers, hasn’t adapted since William Russell Kelly founded the Russell Kelly Office Service in Detroit in 1946.
Exclusive From Monadnock Research: Big Four Fiscal 2013 Advisory Practice Rankings and Conflict Risk Metrics
/2 Comments/in Latest, Pure Content, The Big 4 And ConsultingThis 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.
A China Fraud Dissected: Part 2 AgFeed’s Auditors
/3 Comments/in Latest, Pure Content, The Big 4 And GlobalizationAgFeed had the benefit of two PCAOB registered and inspected audit firms. There is no indication on either the SEC or PCAOB website of an investigation of either for what happened at AgFeed. Is this one going to end badly, too, like the Gately case?
Guest Lectures At Stanford Graduate School Business
/3 Comments/in Pure Content, Where I've BeenMy notes for guest lectures (there were two sections, back-to-back) February 10, 2014 for Bus F332/Law 725, Finance and Society, at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, taught by Professor Anat Admati. Emphasis: The auditors’ role in corporate governance in financial institutions and specifically how auditors not inadvertently stifle the actual use of compensation clawbacks.
VC Horowitz Implicates Auditor PwC In Story About Dodging Backdating Bullet
/3 Comments/in Latest, Pure Content, The Case Against The AuditorsImagine my surprise when Ben Horowitz, one half of the venture capital team of Andreessen Horowitz, wrote a blog post about dodging a stock option backdating jail term that also implicates PwC.
One Way Or Another: The SEC Versus The Chinese Big Four Firms
/14 Comments/in Latest, Pure Content, The Case Against The AuditorsSEC Administrative Judge Cameron Elliot issued a blistering decision last week in a long-running dispute over regulator access to auditor work papers in fraud investigations. The judge banned the Chinese Big Four firms from auditing US issuers for six months and lambasted them for voluntarily putting their firms “between a rock and a hard place.” The decision is not yet final but the enormous impact is already being felt worldwide.