It’s the Friday before Christmas, and when you have a bad case of holiday brain, sometimes mistakes can happen. Sometimes these mistakes can be hilarious. Like this one from Patisserie Holdings, parent company of U.K. coffeehouse chain Patisserie Valerie:
Patisserie Valerie mistakenly says it has named RSM Tenon as its new auditor… RSM Tenon collapsed into administration in 2013 amid allegations of accounting misconduct… *ahem* pic.twitter.com/PRY5uMFKDk
— Tabby Kinder (@Tabby_Kinder) December 20, 2018
What Patisserie Holdings meant to say was that it was hiring RSM U.K. as its new auditor, which the company stated in a corrected press release issued two hours later:
Patisserie Holdings is dumping Grant Thornton U.K. as auditor because GT is under investigation by the Financial Reporting Council for its audit of Patisserie’s financial statements for 2015-17.
The café chain almost collapsed this year due to “potentially fraudulent” accounting irregularities, which set off a chain of events that included the suspension, and then resignation, of CFO Chris Marsh, who was arrested on Oct. 12 before being released on bail.
