Bank regulators should start hiring the consultants that are responding to bank regulatory sanctions, consent decrees and NPA/DPA legal orders directly, and also strictly monitor them. It’s time to change for regulators to change their approach before another waste of time, money and public trust occurs.
Update: The PCAOB is investigating PwC for its tax avoidance advice to Caterpillar, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. One down, more than 100+ PwC audit clients advised via Luxembourg to go…
My latest column at Medium.com responds to PwC’s #LuxLeaks defenses: Illegal docs, legal advice. I also raise the obvious auditor independence issues which no one else is reporting.
The MF Global Holdings Bankruptcy Plan Administrator filed a lawsuit on March 29 for professional malpractice and breach of contract against PwC as auditor of MF Global Holdings. I will be writing about the complaint and the status of the case early next week. In the meantime, you can review all I’ve written prior. I’ve updated this post with additional links as well as a link to my e-book compilation of MF Global columns from all sources that has material going back to its roots in the Refco fraud.
Should 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.
My 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.
Deloitte has been caught thumbing its nose at regulators again. Deloitte is the best example in the Big Four of how a large consulting business corrupts an audit firm.
Crain’s Chicago Business and journalist Steve Strahler have produced a series on the reemergence of the consulting arms of the Big Four audit firms with a particular focus on the Midwest and Chicago firm leadership. I’m quoted and there’s a nice photo.
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.
Taxpayers are getting killed. I think municipal bondholders are next.
I put two new columns up at Forbes recently that talk about JPMorgan, PwC, Senator Levin’s “Whale” hearings, and all the other stuff JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon are really worried about.
