PricewaterhouseCoopers

Even the Irish have had enough of PwC

February 16, 2009 General

Ireland is one of Richard Murphy’s favourite punchbags – most recently talking about the parlous state of their banking system. My friend Tom Raftery who decamped to Sevilla last year recently said Ireland is in such a state that house prices could decline 80%. Wow. This morning, John McManus of the Irish Times has a [...]

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Auditing: it's over cuz it's not smart

February 3, 2009 General

The last few weeks have been a high speed train ride to keep up with the firehose of material coming out of India and the US. If it’s not Deloitte it’s PwC, EY and KPMG next? Then I read this seminal piece from Umair Haque (courtesy of a Tweet from @timoreilly) and I suddenly had [...]

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I'm stunned

February 3, 2009 General

Concurring Opinions asserts that the storm brewing over Deloitte following Judge Kaplan’s decision in the Parmalat case could have dire consequences for the audit profession: Given existing turmoil in capital markets and plans to reform our system of corporate finance, these developments could not come at a worse time. I have a friendly bet with [...]

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Pricewaterhouse finally acts on Satyam

January 27, 2009 Featured

CXO Today is reporting that Pricewaterhouse India has finally acted on the errant partners from its Hyderabad office: Former Satyam auditors – PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) have said that S. Gopalkrishnan and Srinivas Talluri have been suspended of all their duties and functions as PWC partners till the investigation into the Satyam scam is completed. I’m surprised [...]

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Satyam: Merrill Lynch knew

January 8, 2009 General

One of the recurring questions from yesterday’s shock revelations at Satyam was the nagging feeling that someone must have known what was going on. Late last night I started to see reports indicating that Satyam’s investment bankers Merrill Lynch knew what was going on. According to The Times of India: There’s intense speculation as to [...]

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Innovation in audit oversight

January 8, 2009 Innovation

I bet you never thought you’d see that as a headline. Neither did I but then Joe Weisenthal’s ‘Nuke the SEC’ post I started to think differently. Let’s start with Joe’s assertions: First, we nuke the SEC. This isn’t really that radical. There’s precious little evidence that it does what it purports to — namely, [...]

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For once I agree with Sir Mike Rake

October 2, 2008 General

It is a rare event indeed but for once I agree with Sir Mike Rake, BT chairman. Rake was the past CEO of KPMG and the man who had to go begging to the SEC not to kill off the firm following the tax fraud scandals in which it was heavily involved. AccountancyAge says: Speaking [...]

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Speculating on EY's future

September 23, 2008 General

With the demise of Lehman Brothers, Ernst & Young’s $31 million annual fee just went out the window. It’s a tiny amount in the scheme of things when you think that EYs last year’s global revenue came in at $21.1 billion. The bigger problem will be the lawsuit PwC‘s advisors Linklaters are almost certain to [...]

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If PwC can't work it out then how do they audit?

September 18, 2008 General

PwC is sifting through the bones of Lehman Brothers and according to Accountancy Age: There has been speculation that PwC will have to hire specialists to make sense of the investment bank’s derivatives contracts, but all the initial work, apart from legal advice, is being handled by the firm, it said. If that’s the case [...]

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