My take on the latest at the PCAOB and KPMG
In Episode 449 of the FCPA Compliance Report, I spoke with Tom Fox to discuss the current status of the KPMG defendants and what their conduct means for the audit profession going forward.
Posts
Revenue Recognition is Coming: Following the Progress at MarketWatch
/in Food for Thought, Pure ContentOnce I returned from my Stigler Center fellowship I got to work catching up on the new standard, talking to experts everywhere and working with Audit Analytics to come up with the data to support stories–by my and my colleagues–about companies and their response to the new standard. My goal was to pick some of the obscure topics that were unique or focused on a specific industry.
Update: McKenna at the University of Chicago’s Stigler Center
/in Latest, Pure Content, Writing for OthersI’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.
More on KPMG and the Precedents for Possible Punishment
/in Featured, The Case Against The AuditorsWhy did they do it? The WSJ walks around the question but KPMG may face big fines and, I think, its partners and the PCAOB professional could face criminal charges.
A Happy Story About Housing
/in Pure ContentMy MarketWatch colleague Andrea Riquier took a field trip to Indiana earlier this year on a tip about a group that helps people struggling to get their act together and prepare for home ownership. It’s a nice thing to see, given all the ongoing struggles many still have with jobs, finances and the challenges of this economy, especially in the heartland.
McKenna Interviewed By The FCPA Compliance and Ethics Report
/in The Big 4 And GlobalizationI was interviewed back in August by Tom Fox for his podcast on FCPA compliance and ethics issues.
When Auditors Get Mixed Up In M&A, Smaller Clients Get Hurt
/in Independence, Latest, Pure Content, The Case Against The AuditorsA new study says smaller public companies are paying a premium for the prestige of a Big Four auditor but the auditors are dangling small clients as chum for their large acquisitive shark audit clients.
Update: The Shoemaker’s Children… The Big Four And Their Own Broker-Dealers
/in Audit Quality, Writing for OthersDid 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.
McKenna At Medium: Two New Columns For the Bull Market Collection
/in Writing for OthersI’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.
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’.