It was a quiet almost-end to a sordid chapter in PwC’s history. Last week I wrote about PwC’s settlement of their Satyam class action lawsuits in New York for Forbes. Here’s some additional commentary and analysis, including links to all the stories I’ve written about the scandal since it broke in January 2009.
It’s the potential for sudden conflagrations in developing countries that keeps the global audit firms – PwC in this case – up at night. The legal quagmires in developed countries are messy, too. PwC may want to put the Satyam scandal behind them but, unfortunately, I fear there’s still much more pain for the firm to come.
I’ve added the link for the Book TV taping at the bottom of the post.
I’ve been asked me to lead a roundtable at the next Social Media Breakfast Chicago breakfast meeting, “How to engage with critical bloggers”. This event is sold out, but I promise to give you a report afterward.
Mexico is my great love. So I jumped at the chance to contribute to a Special Report at Forbes, On The Road: The Pleasures and Pain of Business Travel. My piece, Glimpses: Cuernavaca, Mexico, June 2005, is about attending the wedding of a client’s daughter.
This week the Goldman Sachs Facebook deal fell apart. Sort of. Due to the extensive media coverage of the details, in particular before they were final, Goldman Sachs was running some really big regulatory risks related to general solicitation of potential shareholders. Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote about the deal on January 4th. Read the rest in my column on Forbes, Accounting Watchdog.
It’s time for the PCAOB Board to think about how they might respond when the audit firms are not going to be so pleased as punch. There’s much for them to address. I’ll be talking about some of those changes and improvements in future posts. But, the most important role of the PCAOB is the inspections process. Let’s take a look at how well that’s going.
While I was in New York last week for the FEI Current Financial Reporting Issues conference, I taped a spot for The Street.com on the November 18th GM IPO. I was against the GM bailout. I’m embarrassed by how the administration has manipulated this “resurrection” of GM.
The way I see it, the in pari delicto doctrine is being used like a pair of needle nosed pliers by audit firm defense lawyers to diffuse the bomb – huge liability for some of the biggest frauds in history. The in pari delicto doctrine attempts to pull the auditors’ tails from the fire by excusing any of their guilty acts due to the approval of those acts by potentially equally guilty executives.
