Related Posts

Luxembourg Court Ruling Nullifies Madoff Investors’ Claims Against Ernst & Young, UBS

Of course the investors are appealing but one win at at time, amiright?

The suits were filed in the fall by investors who lost millions in the LuxAlpha Sicav-American Selection fund which had 95% of its fund invested with Bernie Madoff. The fund claims that it had $1.4 billion in net assets a month prior to Madoff’s arrest.


UBS acted as the custodian while E&Y was the auditor and were sued for “seriously neglecting” their supervisory duties for the fund. Investors in the fund filed more than 100 lawsuits against the two companies.

Luxembourg’s commercial court said in a ruling today concerning 10 test cases that investors can’t bring individual lawsuits for damages. The court said it’s up to the liquidators of the funds that invested with Madoff to seek the “recovery of the capital assets.”

In other words, UBS and E&Y, you’re going to get sued by Irving Picard de Luxembourg rather than 100+ pissed off individuals whose life savings went *poof*. Setting legal precedent aside, taking emotion of the equation works wonders for making an argument.

UBS, Ernst & Young Win Bid to Block Madoff Lawsuits [Bloomberg BusinessWeek]

Earlier:
Ernst & Young Is Thankful for Lawyers, Possibly Toblerones

It Sounds Like KPMG Is *ThisClose* to Jumping Ernst & Young in Revenues

Not sure how we missed this story but thanks to the random commenter who brought it to our attention. New KPMG Global Chairman Michael Andrew was recently interviewed by The Australian and it sounds like KPMG had a pretty kickass fiscal 2011.

We’re still waiting for the official revenue numbers (I’m guessing they’ll be out next week) but Drew kinda spilled the beans already:

New KPMG global chairman Michael Andrew revealed to The Weekend Australian yesterday that the company had recorded a 10.1 per cent increase in revenue in the past financial year, to $22.7 billion. The numbers are due to be released officially later this month.

“If we had not had the Japanese earthquake, I suspect we would have gone past Ernst & Young. Japan is a good market for us. We had really good growth in the Americas and really good growth in tax,” he said yesterday.

FUCKING JAPAN AND YOUR EPIC NATURAL DISASTER! You just cost one of the premier professional services firms on EARTH the chance to leave a rival in the dust. Since there was enormous death and destruction, I guess everyone at the firm will let this go but they’re trying really hard not to throw out some pro forma numbers just for the sake of argument. ANYWAY, for those of you scoring at home, the $22.7 bil puts the House of Klynveld slightly behind E&Y who racked up $22.9 billion for FY ’11. It will also make for the second straight year of a bumper crop of Omaha Steaks for the employees at the firm.

But despite earthquakes and actual hard numbers, Mike is calling it like he sees it:

“We are basically equal No 3. There is still a big gap to PwC and Deloitte, which have been buying large consulting practices in the systems implementation area.”

In other words, if all things were equal, KPMG would probably be the largest firm. They’re just keeping their heads about it.

KPMG grows to match rival Ernst & Young [The Australian]