Comments on: PwC took bribes?

By: Round and Round She Goes… Where She Stops Nobody Knows | called2account

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:20:23 +0000

[...] wasn’t so long ago that, instead of predicting PwC’s imminent demise due to Satyam, Dennis Howlett was questioning Ernst & Young as a [...]

By: PwC and Satyam - Another Fine Mess You’ve Gotten Yourself Into | called2account

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:00:17 +0000

[...] compadre Dennis Howlett saw my Tweets last night that broke the blockbuster news for US readers. HeÂ immediately wrote up his doom and gloom scenario. He’s bet me that PwC as a global firm will fail by the end of the [...]

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:04:44 +0000

@Krupo – at one level I should not be surprised given the scale of what Raju admitted but this is gobsmackingly insane.

@Jr – this is way more serious than Enron was for AA. That was pure stupidity.

By: Jr

Jr — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 06:18:47 +0000

Pardon me if I'm not "accredited" (as you so diplomatically put it earlier today in regards to someone else) but when I grew up in Wisconsin, we knew when a tornado was going to hit in the summer. The sky would suddenly turn green and dark and foreboding… and sure enough, the tornado would come ripping down not too long after.

If you are in the industry, even on the periphery as some of us are (I won't name names), and if you are paying attention or trying to change things or trying to monitor things, you felt this coming.

I know you don't want to start making premature judgments now but I'd be interested in hearing your private thoughts on what should and what will happen as a result of this exposure.

By: Krupo

Krupo — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:46:52 +0000

My jaw dropped

By: Mohamed Amer

Mohamed Amer — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 04:29:55 +0000

Dennis: we've spoken on this when the first reports came out almost three weeks ago. This goes to the heart of the matter: TRUST. At multiple levels we rely on trust to conduct our work, to make investment decisions, to believe in sworn reports, let alone the trust that is built within a community and in society. The failures at Satyam may very well portend other similar situations around the globe. Business operates within a game of trust, once you break that trust, it is very difficult to regain (or earn) that trust again without a herculean and very public effort. Is there a correlation between an executive's rise and behavior at the top and a loss of his/her moral compass? We make CEO's sign statements to the veracity of their financial reports, we also have external auditors review the books and verify these statements (but these are hired/fired – and paid – by the company being audited). When companies (or their CxO) cheat on the books and misstate performance, a properly operating market is swift to punish them and so we'd think that the market can self-regulate and weed out the bad apples and discourage future violations (but the next one always thinks they're smarter than the last…). But then again, the market's "invisible" hand may have been working in different ways at Satyam. The ends do not and should not justify the means no matter how "right" they may be considered, and in Satyam's case it was an unrecoverable precipice into which they have fallen. I just did a quick check of PWC web site, globally or the India landing page, and nothing but normal operations and how PWC "wins the India 'tax firm of the year' award in 2007". This is turning from appearing as complicit fraud to incompetence on a global scale – how can PWC ever regain its once lofty reputation? How can either company regain the public's trust?

Mohamed