Could the audit industry, which thrives on a government mandate that subsidizes an oligopolistic business model, survive if we went, catastrophically, from four to three global firms?
Last defendant standing. Not an enviable place for EY in the case, In re Lehman Brothers Securities and Erisa Litigation. Holding out until the end has now cost EY $99 million, more than Lehman officers and directors.
Do you want to learn more about those who push for a return to the gold standard? Do you know the common thread between JP Morgan, Madoff’s biggest feeder fund, Chesapeake Energy, and MF Global? Here’s a speech I gave back in May 2012 in New York to the Committee for Monetary Research and Education that touches on both topics.
An updated review of Jeff Connaughton’s great book from last year, “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins” over at Medium.com and some more books to read before summer’s over.
A blog post at Medium.com last Friday updated everyone with the latest on the JP Morgan “Whale” traders who were indicted last week and assorted other energy trading and mortgage related investigations. But there’s more!
It’s important for the integrity of the capital markets to assign individual responsibility for audit failures. We need to see the key partners’ names and their career histories because recidivist partners are hiding behind the firms which are very good at dodging general liability.
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.
I’m in San Diego at the Accounting Program Leaders Group/Federation of Schools of Accountancy annual seminar. I spoke Sunday on the profession and its professionals.
You can’t throw a rock at a fraud or scandal nowadays without hitting three, sometimes all four, of the largest global audit firms providing one service or another. The Big Four global accounting firms make money whether clients survive and thrive or flail and fail.
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.
I was in New Orleans this past long Martin Luther King Day weekend to speak at the American Accounting Association Auditing Section Midyear Conference. Here are my slides and text of my remarks.
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.
