Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

PwC Employee More Upset By Aura 4 Than He Was When Facebook Switched to Timeline

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

The Tip Box that you see at the right and top of the page has been a moderate success. Thanks to its simplicity, even the most dense of you can send us information that could prove useful for a story worthy of these pages. And make no mistake, we do appreciate the dense messages; not only does it give everyone at Team GC a good chuckle but also a snapshot into your lives as stewards of the capital markets. 

The downside is that some tipsters treat it as virtual porcelain god that acts as a receptacle for their verbal projectile vomit because something has irked them well past the point of silence. Earlier this year, Adrienne tried to dispense some advice on how avoid that but, as you might expect, it still happens. 
PwC just rolled out Aura 4 this past weekend and I've spent the last 30 minutes or so playing with it.  Needless to say, it's a huge step back from the last version.  They decided it was necessary to make it all pretty by iconifying and coloring everything.  Not to mention breaking simple organizational functions like collapsing controls. The firm invested a lot of money in this program, and all they've done is made it harder for us.
No! Not "needless to say." It's quite the opposite, in fact. No one – save PwC employees that also must deal with this new Aura 4 – knows what you're talking about, but at least it's CLEAR that you're peeved and felt compelled to share your annoyance with the group and that's important. Getting something off your chest will certainly help you feel better whether or not anything really changes and now that it's out there people can agree with you or call you and the other rubes out for not appreciating the more subtle things about Aura 4. 
 
Anyway, since we don't have much to go on, we're sure you'll adapt. Or you won't. Whatever.

Related Posts

Auditor Swap: KPMG No Longer a Smash Hit with Movie Theater Chain Cineworld

Sometimes relationships outlive their usefulness, especially when one partner takes the beer goggles off and […]

PwC Has the Perfect Solution to This Whole Satyam Misunderstanding

Solutions.jpgP. Dubs India wants to avoid having a long, tedious, legal battle over this whole thing. Nobody wants that. So they offered a consent application to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to say sorry about the mixup and let’s just forget the whole thing ever happened.


Not that burying the hatchet won’t take time. The SEBI seems to have an even more dense bureaucracy than the SEC:

The application will be looked at by the Internal Committee of SEBI. If the committee feels that there is merit in this consent, both sides are willing to come to a certain point, it goes to a high power committee on consent proceedings which is headed by a retired Bombay High Court Judge.
Based on the committee’s decision, both sides will sit across the table and decide whether or not they agree with the punishment that could be meted out. As per the consent agreement, there is no acknowledgement of wrong doing.

Oh right, did they mention that last part? There’s nothing to gained by pointing fingers at any one responsible individual or company. PWI would just prefer that they come to an agreement where they aren’t no one is to blame. Problem solved!
PwC hands out olive branch to SEBI in Satyam case [Money Control]

Were PwC and Grant Thornton Ignoring Overstock.com’s Accounting Issues?

Yesterday we briefly picked up the Overstock beat as Sam Antar pointed out that everyone’s favorite Salt Lake City resident got a little confused about when they knew about their gain contingency existed that resulted in some contradictory disclosures.

As you may misremember, this arose from the company for recoveries from underbilled fulfillment partners by improperly claiming that a ‘gain contingency’ existed under accounting rules.”

Now Sam has pointed us to some correspondence between the SEC and Overstock that indicates that PwC wasn’t concerned about the issue until the Commission pointed it out and succeeding auditor Grant Thornton was unmoved until Overstock brought it up:

Please tell us if, and the extent of, your auditors’ national accounting office involvement in these issues during audit of your 2008 financial statements or the reviews of your fiscal 2009 quarterly filings.

PwC served as our auditor during the audit of our 2008 financial statements. PwC has informed us that it did not consult with its national accounting office regarding the above issues when they were identified in Q4 2008 or Q1 2009. However, in connection with this response to your letter dated November 3, 2009, PwC has consulted with its national office in regard to both the fulfillment partner under billing and partner overpayment issues and based on context of this being an area that is a highly facts and circumstances based issue that requires significant judgment where reasonable parties have different views, PwC continues to concur with our accounting and disclosure consistent with its reflection of the underlying economics and our past practices of not billing or collecting for our billing errors, rather negotiating for future price concessions that were contingent on future sales.

Grant Thornton (“GT”) reviewed our Q1 and Q2 2009 quarterly filings. To our knowledge the GT local engagement team did not review these issues with its national accounting office at the time of our Q1 and Q2 2009 quarterly filings. In early October, as we prepared our response to your October 1 letter, we asked GT for its national office’s opinion. It was our understanding at the time that GT’s national office concurred that we had used an appropriate (if not preferred) accounting treatment. Only after we received your November 3 letter, did we become aware that GT’s previous “national office” opinion had in fact been an “informal request” only, and not a “formal request.”

In the case of PwC, it’s entirely possible that they just trusted that OSTK knew what they were doing and went along with it. Obviously a huge mistake. When the SEC came calling however, they moseyed through it again and rang up the accounting wonks at 300 Mad.

But the Grant Thornton engagement team, who came in after all this went down was seemingly on board with it without consulting with its own national accounting gurus even though the SEC was already on this like stink on a monkey. GT making an “informal request” of its national office on an SEC inquiry seems a little tepid.

HOWEVER! You have to remember that this is all in the words of Overstock which hasn’t always been forthcoming/reliable/truthful in its filings. Then again, maybe there’s something to this whole auditor “Yes men” thing.