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…
Tag: accounting
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…
Corporate auditing is broken. Here’s how to fix it – CapX
Can any auditor be truly independent if it is selected by the management it is supposed to review without conflicts? The corporation’s shareholders – key users of the audit report – nominally have the authority to choose auditors. But this authority is usually exercised upon the recommendation of the corporation’s board of directors, which customarily…
Why Shareholders Should Be Cautious of These KPMG Audits, Despite SEC Assurances
SEC Chair Jay Clayton basically told investors “nothing to see here” when five KPMG partners were indicted for unlawfully using prior knowledge of confidential information from their regulator, the PCAOB. Francine McKenna quoted VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow in an article for Marketwatch: Corporate governance expert Nell Minow, the vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, said…
In Stunning Rebuke, GE Shareholders Show Auditor Ratification Is Not Always A Routine Matter – Corporate/Commercial Law – United States
On April 25, shareholders of General Electric Company (GE) approved KPMG LLP as the company’s auditor for another year, but only by a margin of 65 percent “for” to 35 percent “against.” According to data from consulting firm Audit Analytics as reported by The Wall Street Journal, this represents “one of the highest levels of…
Non-GAAP Measures: Questions and Insights
Cindy Fornelli of the Center on Audit Quality writes about perspectives from a series of roundtables with audit committee members, management, investors, securities lawyers, and public company auditors on non-GAAP reporting: If GAAP is the bedrock, why do companies present non-GAAP measures? Participants were asked to share their views on what drives the presentation…
Are Auditors Reliable?
A new report from the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators shows that global accounting watchdogs identified serious problems at 40 per cent of the audits they inspected last year involving companies in “riskier” situations, such as M&A deals. These included conflicts that compromised objectivity, and widespread failures to test the accuracy and reasonableness of…
From ESG to SDGs: An Investor’s Perspective on Sustainability Reporting | Sustainable Brands
Steve Schueth, President and Chief Marketing Officer at First Affirmative Financial Network: I’ve looked at sustainability reports that have been published by large global companies for, let’s say, the past six or seven months. What’s become apparent is that the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] are very much front and center for these large companies. Not…
The Danger Of Not Embracing ESG
According to Rivel Research Group, a firm that specializes in delivering actionable insight based on in-depth measurements of the investment community, ESG has six pillars: enhancement of market and accounting performance; lowering the cost of capital, a means to engage key shareholders; improving business reputation; fostering new revenue growth through product innovation; and aligning company…
