Huntsman Says He’s Quitting G.O.P. Race [NYT]
Jon M. Huntsman Jr. will announce Monday that he is ending his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and endorsing Mitt Romney, narrowing the field and erasing a challenge to Mr. Romney from the moderate wing of his party. Mr. Huntsman, who had hoped to use the South Carolina primary this week to revive his flagging candidacy, informed his advisers on Sunday that he was bowing to political reality and would back Mr. Romney, whom he accused a week ago of putting party ahead of country.
One Cure for Accounting Shenanigans [WSJ]
Jason Zweig: "As the Arab Spring shows, presidents-for-life are finally going out of fashion. For the sake of investors, we should phase out auditors-for-life, too."
Ernst & Young Told to Pay $16 Million in Superior Bank Case [BBW]
Ernst & Young LLP must pay $16 million to a former executive of now-defunct Superior Bank after a Florida appeals court found a judge erred in a case over the accounting firm’s miscues in auditing the thrift’s books. Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld in Fort Lauderdale mistakenly allowed jurors in a 2009 trial to reduce the amount of damages ex-Superior Bank executive Alan Schein was entitled to over Ernst & Young’s auditing mistakes, the appeals court ruled Jan. 11. The jury calculated that Schein suffered a total of $16 million in damages, but said the accounting firm was only responsible for $10.2 million under Streitfeld’s instructions in the case. The Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach, Florida, reinstated the full amount of the verdict.
PwC Emerges as the Fave Firm for Top Grads [CPAT]
Sayeth those grads' professors.
Santorum defends tax reform plan, says it's 'not social engineering' [The Hill]
Some conservative analysts have bashed Santorum’s plan, which would drop the tax rate for manufacturers to zero percent while taxing other corporations at 17.5 percent. The former two-term senator would also triple the deduction taxpayers receive for each dependent child. The analysts have charged that Santorum is promoting social engineering through the tax code, and that his plan to tax manufacturers at different rates would invite distortions, as companies push to get classified as manufacturers for tax purposes. But Santorum declared that support for families in the tax code has taken a comparative tumble in recent years. He also said that Europe was in a “demographic winter” because countries on that continent were not doing enough to promote families.