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.
Because I’m so tired, tired of waiting…
Here’s the thing…The perception of auditor independence is as important, or maybe even more important, than the fact of auditor independence. This is not new.
Deutsche Bank may have avoided a bailout by the German government but borrowed billions from the US Federal Reserve and various programs during this period. So much for avoiding a bailout by pretending there was no risk of catastrophic losses during the financial crisis.
I’ve been watching the developments for a while now between the global audit firms, their clients, the regulators on both sides, and investors – especially the shorts – who have been raising the issues of Chinese frauds. I’ve written quite a bit about these issue. If you’re playing catch up, this list of posts is a good place to start.
HP announced today it is writing down more than $5 billion, or almost half of the Autonomy acquisition price, because of “serious accounting improprieties, misrepresentation and disclosure failures” by Autonomy former executives. Deloitte was the auditor of Autonomy, a UK software firm acquired by HP in 2011 for $11.1 billion.
I taped an episode of the Keiser Report last week while in New York. The focus was Jamie Dimon with a bit of MF Global thrown in for heat. Max Keiser, the host, asked me this question: Why does Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase still have a job?
The blog is meant to highlight, for you the reader, the broad-based influence the Big 4 have in business, politics and social policy. Their reach is only exceeded by their constant grasp.
Chapter 21 of Sheila Bair’s book, “Bull By The Horns,” is a blow-by-blow account of the wrangling and dealmaking that resulted in two settlements that satisfy neither consumer advocates nor the borrowers that were harmed by abusive mortgage servicer activities.
Here’s the background on SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors, a cloud-based HR application.
