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Mike McGuire Is Retiring From Grant Thornton

Posted on by Jason Bramwell

Mike McGuire with his man-crush, Rickie Fowler.

Farewell to Mike McGuire, former CEO-turned-CEO emeritus of Grant Thornton, who is hanging it up in February after 17 years with the Purple Rose of Chicago.

“I am so pleased about the progress we’ve made growing our firm and serving clients’ needs during my time at Grant Thornton,” said McGuire. “Participating in this work as a teammate, partner and leader has been the greatest honor of my professional life.”

Mike McGuire

We’ve had fun covering McG through the years, from when he was announced to succeed the dynamic Stephen Chipman as GT CEO in 2014, to putting together a 160-page plan on how GT would prosper during his tenure and then realizing NO ONE would read 160 pages of his musings so he cut it down to five pages, to comparing Grant Thornton to Tesla, to blowing off work to throw out the first pitch at a Chicago Cubs game, to being one of the accounting luminaries who would’ve survived Thanos’s snap.

We’ll also miss the videos he did with his man-crush and Grant Thornton’s favorite golfer, Rickie Fowler.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhquzptI6sY&feature=emb_title

From everything we’ve been told, McGuire was well-liked by GT employees, he’s been a good sport about our good-natured ribbing of him, and he’s a Cubs fan, which makes him OK in my book.

Prior to becoming GT CEO in 2014, McGuire served on the firm’s senior leadership team as national managing partner of operations and previously was managing partner of the firm’s Carolinas practice. He joined Grant Thornton in 2002 after a 20-year career at Arthur Andersen.

McGuire stepped down as CEO last June and took over the role of CEO emeritus and “brand ambassador” in August. Brad Preber, who was named GT’s interim CEO last summer, had the “interim” tag removed in November.

Where will McG turn up next? The press release states that he is “active with several civic and business groups and expects to increase these activities.” Maybe he winds up on a public company board of directors in the near future?

Whatever the case, happy trails, Mike. Maybe I’ll see you at Wrigley Field this summer.

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Grant Thornton Dodges the Koss Bullet, Is Dismissed From Shareholder Lawsuit

U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman has dismissed Grant Thornton as a defendant in a class-action shareholder lawsuit against GT, Koss Corp. and CEO Michael J. Koss, filed in January 2010 on behalf of plaintiff David Puskala and other Koss shareholders.

In his ruling, Adelman stated that the plaintiffs failed to make a case for GT’s epic failure to detect former Koss executive Sue Sachdeva’s $34 million embezzlement/hoarding scheme. Reasonable, considering GT auditors scared the crap out of old Sue, even though they were sticking newbies on the gig.  “Fear was one thing. I thought it was imminent,” she said in a court deposition last year. “Their auditors, every time they walked in, I’d say, ‘This is it. They’re going to catch me.’” Shareholders’ issue – we assume – is that they didn’t. Year after year after year after year until 2009 rolled around and the whole house of cards came tumbling down.

The judge also dismissed claims of willful or reckless behavior against Michael Koss, saying “I conclude that the innocent explanations are more compelling than the inference of recklessness.” Meaning Mike couldn’t possibly have known Sue had been siphoning off millions in company money over a six year period, absent hanging out at her house and noticing all the fancy new shit she had strewn everywhere. And stashed in closets. And bursting out of her garage.

As for Grant Thornton, the judge wrote that the occurrence of fraud and failure to detect it doesn’t imply recklessness on the part of the accounting firm, but rather that the firm was negligent. While it is clear that Sachdeva used her position with Koss to bypass the company’s not-rock-solid internal controls, it is also believed that the controls were sufficient so as not to be obviously unreliable to a reasonable person (or auditor fresh out of accounting school). We’re looking forward to hearing how audit professors use this decision to emphasize the cavernous depth between “negligence” and “recklessness” on the part of auditors.

Sachdeva is still a defendant in the Puskala lawsuit and is currently serving 11 years for the fraud.

Grant Thornton dismissed from Koss shareholder lawsuit [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]