Seems legit.
Let's exercise some professional skepticism here and ask ourselves if there is any conflict of interest in a bunch of guys who head up audit for KPMG telling us that audits are valuable:
As the world picks up the pieces following the global financial crisis, the value of audit and its role have come to the forefront of an international debate. What is the value of audit? How can corporate reporting be improved? The Value of Audit: Shaping the Future of Corporate Reporting, features candid interviews with KPMG audit leaders answering these questions and more. Despite an uncertain global economic climate, one thing is certain—audit serves an important function, but change is afoot.
Who is this written for? The public companies that are required to hand over sacks of cash to these guys for financial statement audits or the investors who know audited financial statements are just slightly more reliable than un-audited ones?
If you actually read the whitepaper, you discover that they aren't talking so much about the value of audits as the future of audits — and therefore this elusive phantom called "audit quality" everyone is chasing — but on the surface, you wonder who would care to hear a bunch of audit guys talk about why they themselves are valuable to capital markets.
Of course they think that, I mean their entire lives are a lie if they don't.
