Who’s Ready for Changes to the Auditor’s Report?

Remember Alterra Capital Holdings Ltd? They’re were exposed by Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil last month as the KPMG-Bermuda audit client that was selected by the PCAOB for inspection. The audit didn’t go so hot as the inspectors found “the firm did not obtain sufficient competent evidential matter to support its opinion on the issuer’s financial statements.” To put this in context, Weil explained that available-for-sale securities were the largest asset on Alterra’s balance sheet and it accounted for “half of the company’s $7.3 billion of total assets as of Dec. 31, 2008, and a little more than half of its $9.9 billion of total assets at the end of last year.”

In wake of this little revelation, research firm Glass Lewis & Co. has recommended to Alterra Capital Holdings that they kick KPMG-Bermuda to curb (after nine glorious years), according to a copy of the “Proxy Paper” sent to Going Concern. The report rehashes the whole story and then concludes with this:

Despite the lack of any restatements of previous financial statements, we believe that shareholders should be concerned about the reappointment of KPMG following the lapses uncovered by the PCAOB. Therefore, we believe that shareholders should hold the audit committee responsible for reappointing the same audit firm.

Glass Lewis also wanted to make shareholders “aware” of the fact that Alterra’s Audit Committee Chair, CFO and CAO are all KPMG alumni but stopped short of citing it as a reason to oppose KPMG at the meeting on May 2. According to the report, Glass Lewis had recommended that Alterra retain KPMG as auditor prior to the last shareholder’s meeting which the shareholders did by an overwhelming margin with nearly 91 million votes voting “For,” 182k voting “Against” and 32k abstained.