Author: Caleb Newquist

Founding editor, Going Concern.

Apparently ‘The Purpose of Auditors Is Completely, Entirely, and Wholly’ to Look for Fraud and ‘Deloitte is the best. Period. End of Statement.’

Remember China MediaExpress? That’s the company whose CEO – Zheng Cheng – responded to the accusations of fraud by evoking ‘reputable and well-known’ Deloitte to get the haters off their back. Even though the company is still taking heat, Mr Cheng will be happy to know that he’s got someone in his corner: Glen Bradford, CEO of ARM Holdings LLC, a Hedge Fund Advisory Company. The thing is, Mr Bradford seems a little confused about what an auditor’s purpose is (for fun, I added some emphasis):

I have received tons of messages that can be summarized by the belief that auditors do not look for fraud and that all they do is make sure things line up in the reports. I can say that this is not true simply by being practical. If we didn’t have auditors to verify the claims that companies make, then companies could claim whatever they want to. The purpose of auditors is completely, entirely, and wholly to look for indications of fraudulant activity — and to do their best to remove all possible doubt that the company is misrepresenting itself on its financial statements.

You can make of that what you will but then Glen continues:

Then, if things are OK, they sign off on them. Some auditors are better than others. Deloitte is the best. Period. End of Statement.

Well then! I’m sure Deloitte appreciates the ringing endorsement regardless if it comes from someone who is under the impression that “The purpose of auditors is completely, entirely, and wholly to look for indications of fraudulant activity.” At the very least, this is debatable point, so if you have a difference of opinion with anything above, feel free to share below.

China MediaExpress Holdings: All Eyes on Deloitte [Seeking Alpha]

Accounting News Roundup: IASB Urges U.S. on IFRS…Again; Film Credits Showing Life in Idaho, Arizona; Auditors Feel They’re Skeptical Enough | 03.11.11

BOJ Pledges Liquidity on Japan Quake as Toyota Shuts Plants [Bloomberg]
Japan’s central bank pledged to ensure financial stability after the strongest earthquake in at least a century forced Toyota Motor Corp. to shut some plants, knocked out oil refineries and sparked a plunge in stocks. The magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck off the coast of Sendai, a city of 1 million in the northeast, unleashing a tsunami as high as 10 meters (33 feet) that engulfed towns along the coast. The Tohoku region, which includes Sendai, accounts for about 8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, according to Macquarie Song>IASB urges US to adopt new accounting rules [FT]
Speaking in Washington DC on Thursday, Sir David Tweedie sought to reassure the US that it would not be ceding control of its accounting system to foreign politicians if it adopted the IASB’s rules. The plea by Sir David comes at the same time as a push by the European Commission to secure a greater say for public authorities in the oversight of his organisation. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is due to decide this year whether to jettison US accounting rules in favour of adopting the IASB’s international financial reporting standards (IFRS), which are followed in the European Union and a number of other countries.

Has India Abandoned IFRS? [The Accounting Onion]
Paging Sir David…

Medical marijuana subject to new LA tax [DMWT]
If only it were that simple.

3 Accounting Associations Merge to Form IGAF Polaris [AT]
Three international accounting associations—Polaris International, Fidunion and IGAF Worldwide—are merging together to create one of the largest associations of independent accounting firms in the world. The merged association, which will operate under the name IGAF Polaris, will contain 385 member firms with combined annual revenue of over $1.82 billion. The association will include a combined total of 2,402 partners, 16,304 professional staff operating out of 846 offices in 88 countries around the globe.

Arizona and Idaho Look Again to Film Tax Credits [Tax Foundation]
Joe Kristan is getting heartburn.


Pentagon accounting problems ‘serious’: Treasury [AFP]
Essentially the DoD is unauditable.

Ford truck crashes into public accountant’s office in Dodge City [Dodge City Daily Globe]
Yes, that Dodge City.

Deloitte Announces Alliance Agreement with MicroStrategy to Deliver Business Intelligence and Analytic Solutions [PR Newswire]
Under the agreement, Deloitte will combine MicroStrategy’s advanced business intelligence (BI) technology with its broad array of consulting, advisory and implementation services to assist their mutual clients in meeting information, business intelligence and analytic needs. The alliance includes collaboration on solution, service and market development, education, training, sales and delivery.

Auditors reject lack of scepticism concerns [Accountancy Age]
Auditors have rejected the suggestion that there [sic] work requires more scepticism. Following the release of a discussion paper from regulators on whether auditor scepticism needs to be increased, firms defended their attitude and working processes to provide audits. Some noted that the application of international financial reporting standards (IFRS), which can provide a range of potential outcomes, is confused by regulators as a lack of scepticism.

LECG Fire Sale Continues; San Fran Forensic Accounting Group Joins FTI Consulting

After last week’s news of LECG Corp. selling off pieces of itself to FTI Consulting, Grant Thornton and WeiserMazars, today the company announced that it has also sold its forensic accounting practice in San Francisco to FTI:

Professional services firm LECG Corporation (NASDAQ: XPRT) announced today that it has transitioned its San Francisco forensic accounting practice to FTI Consulting, Inc. The transition involves approximately 25 employees.


Not only that but the pieces left are also up for bid for anyone interested, although common shareholders shouldn’t expect to see anything:

With the advice of its restructuring advisors, LECG continues to negotiate the transition of all practice groups remaining after today’s transaction and transactions disclosed in previous public communications. LECG will use the proceeds from all practice group transitions to repay the $27.8 million in principal outstanding under its credit facility. The company will use the balance of any proceeds to make payments to other creditors. Contractually, if there is any remaining value available to equity holders, it would be first allocated to the company’s outstanding preferred stock. The company believes that the transitions and these transactions will not result in any proceeds for the common shareholders.

The Philly Business Journal reports that the company still has about 500 employees left but at the rate things are going, they’ll be elsewhere by St. Patrick’s Day. Good luck to everyone affected.

LECG Transitions Parts of Forensic Accounting Practice Group to FTI [LECG]
LECG jettisons another practice group, this time in San Francisco [PBJ]
Earlier:
WeiserMazars Moves into Chicago as Part of Acquisition of LECG Units [GC]

Accountant, Who Avoids Confrontation ‘as a General Rule,’ Guilty of Hitting a Trashman with Her Car

Question for the group: what could have been going on in this woman/accountant’s life that caused her to do the following?

An accountant drove into a bin man ‘in a rage’ after his lorry blocked the road, a court heard. Frances Henshaw, 43, was alleged to have snarled ‘like a rabid dog’ when she got stuck behind the wagon. She was hauled before the courts after bin man Craig Kelly claimed he was hit by her car as she forced her way through a tiny gap. Henshaw was found guilty of driving without due care and attention, leaving the scene of an accident and failing to report an accident.


We’ve come across a fair share of accountants that resemble a rabid dog (i.e. crazy eyes, violent biting, uncontrollable drooling) so that description is certainly believable but she does fall back on the passive nature of a many a beancounter:

She said: “They’d done a few clumps of bins and they’d made no effort to let me past. I felt there should have been an occasion where they acknowledged my presence. “I wasn’t shouting. I never shout at anyone. I avoid confrontation as a general rule. I would have stopped if I had hit someone. It’s just not something that’s in my nature to do, it’s incredulous to me.”

Raging accountant ‘drove her car into bin man who blocked the road’ [MEN]

Chinese Companies Want the Big 4 Magic

“Companies are under pressure from investors to get the best auditor they can,” said Paul Gillis, an accounting professor at Peking University in Beijing. More than 200 Chinese companies are listed on U.S. exchanges, and hundreds more trade on over-the-counter bulletin boards. In the last five months, at least 15 have upgraded to a Big Four auditor — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers or KPMG — from a smaller firm, according to an analysis from Audit Analytics. [Reuters]

Weary Big 4 Auditors Are Invited to Live Out Their ‘What I Really Wanted to Be’ Dreams This Saturday

As busy season trudges along, some of you may be looking for a second wind. For many of you, any chance that you can reach down into your soul and conjure up a little more energy to help you reach the finish line passed with that blown deadline.

However, for anyone on the Isle of Manhattan that is looking for a little pick-me-up this weekend, we’ve been informed that there is a fiesta in the making (invitation art at right) and it invites you to harken for the days when your aspirations weren’t so practical:

My friend is having a party this weekend with what I think is a pretty clever theme. On Saturday, we will be attending “Fuck! We are Auditors (How did that happen)”. Description:

“Have you always dreamed of becoming an Auditor?

If so, this party is not for you. For everyone else, come celebrate the (nearing) end of busy season! The theme of FWAA is to dress up as something you wanted to be when you were a kid. So call up your mom or flip through your diary to see what aspirations you had when you were young. Points (more alcohol) will be given to those who have a very convincing outfit.

So don on a lab coat, leotard, or tiara, bring a little somethin’ somethin’ (alcohol), and come get your drunk on. Feel free to invite other auditor or drab job related friends. Perhaps this theme will inspire other auditors to put their life in perspective and go for it…or just drink more to our unachieved dreams. We obviously don’t mean any disrespect to our jobs (or firm. no need to bite the hand that feeds you) seeing as we just started, but any reason to drink/dress up right? It’s been a long busy season. One down, and god-knows-how-many to go.

And good news, the party-throwers (who wouldn’t share their firm with us) have deemed this all-firms-are-created-equal event, “we’re willing to look past those corporate labels and invite all auditors to party.” Of course if you’re not in the Tri-state area, you’ll have to organize your own dashed-dreams rager but the theme has been set. Cowboy, pro athlete, Miss USA, movie star, whatever you failed to be, you’re invited to pretend for a few awkward hours this weekend. As long as you’re not working of course.

New Wells Fargo CFO: Arachnophobia Is Partially Responsible for Bank’s Success

It boils down to this: if something has less than eight appendages, it’s cool; greater than eight or more is to be avoided.

“Our business is really pretty simple,” Sloan, 50, said in an interview last week at the bank’s San Francisco headquarters. “When you look at the deal and its structure looks like an octopus or a spider, just don’t do it. That kept us out of a lot of things.”

Wells Fargo’s Sloan Avoids Spiders, Octopuses in Rise to CFO [Bloomberg]

How Should an Ex-Big 4 Manager Broach a Possible Return to the Firm with His Boss?

Welcome to the this-ashes-made-me-break-out edition of Accounting Career Emergencies. In today’s edition, a former Big 4 manager wants to pursue a chance to return to this old firm. How does he handle this with his current employer?

Got a question about your career? Do you have an interesting opportunity but not sure if you should pursue it? Need a new nickname for your special, super-secret team? Email us at advice@goingconcern.com and we’ll help you avoid anything lame (or possibly racist).

Back to the Big 4 Boomerang:

Hey Going Concern,

About a year ago, I left Big 4 as an audit manager and now work for a client of my former firm (though not one of mine, Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley made sure of that). Lately, I’ve been seriously considering a return to my old Big 4 stomping grounds.

My questions isn’t whether I’m crazy or not, it’s how to handle the issue with my current company. It’s not a slam dunk that I will return to my old firm, but I want to at least pursue it. On the plus side, I have a good relationship with my current boss (we’ve known each other for several years).

If I come clean to my boss but end up staying, that’s a pretty big matzo ball hanging out there. If I reach out to my firm on the sly and leave, I threaten to restart my audit career by angering a client.

Help me Going Concern, you’re my only hope…

Thanks,
The Once and (possibly) Future Auditor

Dear Oa(p)FA,

A Seinfeld and a Star Wars reference? Obviously this is keeping you up at night. I’m on this. Since you’ve made up your mind that you are pursuing a Big 4 boomerang situation, I won’t pass judgment there but knowing a little more about your situation might be helpful. I’ll be making some assumptions in order to help you with your ordeal.

Personally, I’m a “honesty is the best policy” type, so telling your boss about your ambitions is the way to go. It sounds like you’ve got a good relationship with him/her and if you do the march in, drop the news and are gone in two weeks, I feel like you’re torching that bridge. The best thing you can do is explain your reasons for pursuing a return to your Big 4 firm. If it’s because you really miss auditing, I think you need your head examined. If it’s because you think you want to make a run at partner, the odds are against you. If it’s because you think it will better prepare you for a return to an industry for a management position, then you can probably explain this to your boss (assuming he/she is level-headed person); your honesty will be appreciated and your integrity will remain intact.

And if you don’t get the job, what then? Well, that is a bit awkward but if you and your boss have a good relationship and are the only two people aware of the situation (which I recommend), you don’t have to worry about others getting all judgmental on your ass and you’ll eventually get back to business as usual. If your boss knows you well, he/she probably is aware of your long-term career ambitions and knows that a move (regardless of whether it’s a return to your old firm) is inevitable at some point and situations like this will come up occasionally. And if your boss isn’t aware of what you want out of your career, this is a perfect time to start talking about it. May The Force be with you.

Another Accountant Superhero Is in Our Midst

You may remember back in January when a PwC employee put down his pencil to – according to his farewell email – fight crime as the caped avenger. At the time, we expressed concern not only because there can’t be two Batmans but because…well, we’re just skeptical of any cube-dweller’s ability to make the streets safe for the rest of us.

Despite our doubts, that hasn’t stopped another accountant, Irene Thomas (aka Nyx), from taking to the streets to fight for truth, justice and all that crap.

By day Irene Thomas says she is a ‘boring’ accountant who lives in a cramped New Jersey flat. By night she puts on a black catsuit and mask with a red belt, gloves and boots, gets into her Honda Accord car and comes out the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel in Manhattan as ‘Nyx’. The 21-year-old is just one member of the Real Life Superhero Project, a group of humans who aim to bring a helping hand to people everywhere and thwart crime on city streets.

It doesn’t appear that Nyx wasn’t born with natural crime fighting abilities, as the Real Life Superhero Project has documented her training on their website. As with all superheroes, there has to be another side to Nyx that we don’t get to see. What kind of pain or personal aguish has she gone through that has caused her to take up this cause? Does the thought of spending hours upon hours in a cube farm staring at spreadsheets haunt her dreams to the point of insomnia, thus leading to the spending her nights running around the City a dominatrix outfit? Is she looking for more from life besides a good paycheck, generous benefits and half-days Fridays during the summer? Or is it something deeper?

‘Like the night, I cannot be proven or disproven to certain degrees – and also much like the night, when morning comes, there will be no trace of me.’

Jesus, who knows. Fly-by-night psychoanalysts are welcome to weigh in now.

Real Life Superheroes [via Daily Mail]

Accounting News Roundup: U.S. Companies Aren’t Ready for IFRS; Limited Liability Is a Godsend; Out with the Old GM CFO | 03.10.11

IFRS Outlook: Hurry Up and Wait [CFO]
Asked which are the most crucial accounting issues that their companies are facing in 2011, 34% of the 472 CFOs who responded to the question ranked “Convergence to IFRS,” or international financial reporting standards, as number one. Cumulatively, the respondents ranked IFRS convergence higher than any other accounting issue. Yet asked to describe their companies’ “readiness to comply with global accounting standards,” 44.2% said they hadn’t “begun to address convergence,” while 38.8% said they were preparing, “but far from ready.”

Satyam Seeks SEC Approval To Shorten Period of Earnings Restatement [Dow Jones]
Satyam Computer Services Ltd. […] which is recovering from a fraud scandal, is in talks with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to shorten the time frame for which the company would need to restate its earnings under U.S. accounting standards, its chairman said. A restatement of earnings under U.S. accounting standards would be one of the prerequisites for Satyam to be able to relist on the New York Stock Exchange.

Auditors would deflate accounting bubbles [FT]
But it is right for regulators to impose high standards on auditors, who in servicing big quoted companies benefit from what looks suspiciously like an oligopoly. Accountants who habitually let a little air out of inflated asset values could help avert future market crashes. In an old joke, a chief executive asks his slick FD what the profits figure is. “What would you like it to be?” comes the reply. Sceptical auditors would guard against that.

Auditors Abandon Investors On Liability Limits [Forbes]
The Big 4 audit firms have always been preoccupied with significant legal liability in the US. Managing these cases requires exorbitant amounts of the US firms’ time and money. Their international umbrella firms and, in many cases, members firms in other parts of the world are also burdened. It’s my estimate that Big 4 leadership spends 75% of their time on litigation matters.


American Apparel CEO held teen as sex slave: lawsuit [Reuters]
American Apparel Inc founder and chief executive Dov Charney is being sued for $250 million by a woman who said he treated her as a sex slave when she was a teenage sales employee at the clothing chain. Irene Morales of Brooklyn, New York, has accused Charney, 42, of sexual harassment, creating a hostile workplace, gender discrimination and retaliation. American Apparel and directors at the company have also been named as defendants in the lawsuit, filed in a New York state court on Friday. Morales accused them of failing to protect her, and said they knew or should have known that Charney was a “sexual predator.”

Marijuana IPOs Provide Investors With Gateway to Cannabis Boom [Bloomberg]
The legalization of medical marijuana — permitted in at least 15 states — has kicked off a booming economy in ancillary goods. Startups such as Peterson’s GrowOp Technology Ltd. and General Cannabis Inc. (CANA) compare the phenomenon to the California gold rush, when the people making the real money were the ones selling pick axes and shovels. Both companies are planning initial public offerings, part of an effort to remove the stigma from what’s seen as a multibillion-dollar industry.

GM Announces CFO Transition [PR Newswire]
General Motors Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell today announced that he will leave the company April 1, 2011, having completed the largest public offering in history and stabilizing the company’s financial operations. Liddell, 52, joined GM in January, 2010 and led the company’s financial and accounting operations on a global basis. “Chris was a major contributor during a pivotal time in the company’s history,” said Dan Akerson, GM chairman and CEO. “He guided the company’s IPO process and established a good financial foundation for the future.”

BREAKING: Some Banks Are Uncooperative with Auditor Requests

From the mailbag:

Just thought I’d share some developments from the audit world. Some financial institutions which respond to our audit requests are adding disclaimers such as the following:

“…The recipient acknowledges that [the respondent] does not represent and warrant that the information is complete and accurate. The recipient further acknowledges that the information may not disclose the entire relationship between the customer and [the respondent]…”

Basically, this is making the confirmation process entirely pointless as banks are saying that even if they sign and respond to a confirmation, they aren’t guaranteeing that their response actually means that the balance is accurate. They are also doing this in the fine print attached to a lot of confirmations so it wasn’t entirely obvious until some people started actually reading that fine print. This is causing issues as we can no longer rely on these confirmations for our audit procedures if they contain such a disclaimer.

Technology at SEC Good Enough for Viewing Porn, Not Reliable Internal Controls

Last year the Government Accountability Office issued a report that called attention to the SEC’s accounting system (or lack thereof). Reuters now reports that the SEC will admit in testimony tomorrow that the material weaknesses in their accounting system are largely due to technology that would make your grandparents laugh.

“These material weaknesses are unacceptable,” the SEC’s top division directors said in prepared testimony that was viewed by Reuters. They added the “root causes” of the problems stem from “years of underinvesting in financial system technologies.”

It should be noted that while the accounting systems were not quite up to snuff for the GAO, the equipment used by employees was sufficient for viewing a metric asston of porn, which we just learned moments ago, was even more widespread than initially thought.

SEC says its accounting problems stem from technology [Reuters]