David Hilzenrath and Nicholas Trevino of the Project on Government Oversight have written a monumentally important investigative report on the failure of the agency set up following the Enron/WorldCom/MCI/HealthSouth and other accounting scandals to take exactly the actions it was designed for. There is a long Washington tradition of capture of regulatory agencies by industry,…
Tag: accounting
Time to tackle ‘Big Four’ auditors’ bad behaviour | Descrier News
The Carillion case is just one example in a string of alleged transgressions lighting a fire under the major audit firms, as British policymakers finally confront the need to crack down on the industry. KPMG is still haemorrhaging clients and staff after its extremely controversial work for the Gupta family in South Africa, whose close ties to former…
SEC fines KPMG $50 million for illegal use of regulatory data and cheating on internal exams – MarketWatch
Just to be clear: The KPMG employees cheated on the exams required to make sure that they were up to date on vital matters for professional competence. And the consequence is a fine and an order that they have to evaluate themselves to find out who cheated and bring in an outside consultant to look…
SEC proposes eliminating auditor checks on controls at low-revenue biotechs – MarketWatch
As journalist Francine McKenna points out, this proposal is the result of massive lobbying money spent by the industry, which wants to free itself from the exact rules that were adopted following the Enron-era accounting disasters. These rules not only prevented similar problems, but they were crucial for establishing the credibility and stability of the…
Firms are better off revealing their environmental practices, new research shows | EurekAlert! Science News
Is honesty the best policy when it comes to being green? It just might be, according to a new paper by Michel Magnan, a professor of accountancy at the John Molson School of School of Business.In their article for Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, Magnan and co-author Hani Tadros of Elon University in North…
The vast majority of reported company earnings are not fully audited – MarketWatch
VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow is quoted in an article about the decreasing number of earnings reports that are audited and the pressure on auditors to make the final results consistent with the unaudited numbers. “Earnings reports have become less and less reliable, and investors are understandably increasingly skeptical. The next step should be increasing…
SOX Internal Controls Provision Creates Investor Value After All
[I]n the longstanding controversy over 404(b), the voice of one constituency has been conspicuous by its absence — and ironically, it’s the very group the regulation supposedly protects: namely the investment community. Whether the provision actually holds value to investors has remained unclear.Now, the January issue of the The Accounting Review, an American Accounting Association journal, includes the…
Exxon Must Face Class-Action Suit Over Climate-Change Accounting – Bloomberg
Bloomberg reports: Exxon Mobil Corp. must face a lawsuit by investors who blamed a drop in the company’s shares on the disclosure that regulators were scrutinizing its reserve accounting related to climate change. U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade on Tuesday denied Exxon’s bid to dismiss the suit. Kinkeade wrote that the Greater Pennsylvania Carpenters Pension…
PwC doing double duty as auditor and tax lobbyist – MarketWatch
VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow is quoted in this article about potential conflicts of interest in PwC’s getting lobbying fees from audit clients. Nell Minow, a corporate governance expert and the vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, told MarketWatch, “There are serious conflict of interest issues when an auditor has a lucrative side project involving its…
Comment Letter on IOSCO Consultation Report on Audit Committee Good Practices from Samantha Ross
Mr. Jonathan Bravo International Organization of Securities Commissions Calle Oquendo 12 28006 Madrid Spain By email: consultation-04-2018@iosco.org Re: Public Comment on IOSCO Consultation Report on Good Practices for Audit Committees in Supporting Audit Quality To the Board of the International Organization of Securities Commissions: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on your…
