Catch up, we covered this on Sunday night: In a bizarre piece of auditing news released late on a Sunday night, KPMG has verbally resigned as Nebraska-based TierOne Bank’s independent auditor, withdrawn its audit opinion for 2008 and taken back its review of TierOne’s financials for the quarter ended March 31, 2009. Citing risk of material misstatement, KPMG has also warned the audit committee that TierOne’s financials are not to be relied upon by investors.
Well today is April 30th and that means TierOne has run out of time to get its shit together to please the OTS. Meanwhile, KPMG is still paddling away in the lifeboat before the ship sinks but with a week’s head start, we’re sure they’ve gotten far enough away from the scene of the crime to be entirely unaffected by the outcome, whatever it may be.
In a textbook case of he said/she said, TierOne is a little butthurt that KPMG would suddenly change its tune and bail on the bank so close to such an important deadline. Adding insult to injury, KPMG claims that TierOne destroyed a document on specific reserves required by the OTS, even though the auditors had requested the document more than once. TierOne claims that it gave the document to both the OTS and KPMG as requested. TierOne also enthusiastically states that not once did KPMG express any concerns about the bank’s condition until just before bailing on the bank and resigning from the audit.
We’ll update if the FDIC moves in later this afternoon and takes down TierOne.
UPDATE: TierOne tried to sell itself to Great Western Bank but the deal was shot down by the OTS. The $2+ billion bank is sort of just sitting there exposed in the open without an auditor and no real plan, you can pretty much guess what happens from here. Meanwhile, it was a busy Bank Fail Friday but TierOne was not among them. See you next week?
TierOne sale plan due today [Lincoln Journal Star]
