Posts Tagged ‘audit firms’
More on Auditors and Compliance Violations
Today let’s return to that proposal to have audit firms look more aggressively for compliance and legal violations at their client companies. One of my spies in the audit world recently provided me a glimpse into his firm’s preliminary discussions about this idea — and their concerns are well worth compliance and internal audit professionals’…
Read MorePCAOB and Compliance Violations, Part II
Today I want to revisit last week’s proposal from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board that audit firms should look more aggressively for compliance and legal violations at their client companies. There are compelling arguments about why this might be a bad idea, which compliance and internal audit professionals need to consider closely. To understand…
Read MorePCAOB Eyes Compliance Violations
Audit firms may soon be under more pressure to look for potential fraud and other legal or compliance violations at their client companies, and then to report any such findings to the company’s board and senior management promptly. So says a new proposal unveiled today by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Right now the…
Read MoreSilicon Valley Bank: The Oversight Debacle
Today I want to return to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Everyone has been wondering how the bank met its sudden demise, and whose poor oversight allowed that to happen. Now we have more details to help answer those questions — and, ideally, avoid a repeat performance elsewhere. People first trained their fire on…
Read MoreE&Y, the SEC, and ‘Gatekeepers’
The saying in Washington is that it’s not the crime that ruins you; it’s the coverup. Ernst & Young is learning this week how true that is, with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s $100 million fine against the firm for cheating on CPA exams and then failing to be forthcoming about the breadth of that…
Read MoreCohnReznick Dinged $1.9M on Sloppy Procedures
The Securities and Exchange Commission has fired a shot across the bow of the auditing world, charging audit firm CohnReznick and three of its partners on Wednesday with improper professional conduct involving two corporate clients that had previously faced charges of accounting fraud. The companies in question are Sequential Brands, which the SEC charged with…
Read MoreEx-KPMG Boss Fined on Insider Tip Scandal
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has fined the former vice-chair of KPMG’s audit practice $100,000 for his role in a scandal where KPMG offered jobs to PCAOB employees in exchange for confidential information about upcoming inspections of KPMG audits. You might remember the story from several years ago. The feds indicted three KPMG partners…
Read MoreSEC Reminds on Auditor Independence
The top accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission has fired off a statement this week about the importance of audit firm independence and corporate audit committees overseeing that relationship with the external auditor — almost one year to the day after the Trump Administration’s SEC relaxed auditor independence rules. The statement came from Paul…
Read MorePCAOB Alert on Audits, External Data
The PCAOB published fresh guidance last week about how auditors should handle evidence supplied by others to help the auditor assess financial statements, important performance or valuation metrics, and, well, all the other stuff that can go into an audit report these days. The guidance is formally titled “Evaluating Relevance and Reliability of Audit Evidence…
Read MorePCAOB Stands Pat on Data Analytics
The PCAOB released an update Thursday on its thinking about how to use data analytics and related technologies in financial audits, and it seems that the regulator will maintain for now its belief that no new auditing standards to address technology are necessary. For several years now, the PCAOB has run a small task force…
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