Financial Times (May 3)
“The trio of bank failures since March has cast a pall over KPMG’s lucrative business as the largest auditor of the US banking sector.” SVB, Signature and First Republic all “had one thing in common: KPMG” and the auditor will be facing “scrutiny in aftermath of their collapses.”
Tags: Aftermath, Auditor, Bank failures, Banking sector, Collapses, First Republic, KPMG, Lucrative, Pall, Scrutiny, Signature, SVB, U.S.
Financial Times (December 9)
“The Big Four accounting firms have recorded their strongest financial performance since the collapse of Enron as corporate clients rushed to transform their businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.” Revenues soared to over $167 billion, collectively, in spite of “continued criticism of the structure and performance of the firms, especially in audits, including scrutiny of EY’s failure to identify fraud at Wirecard.”
Tags: Accounting firms, Audits, Big Four, Clients, Collapse, Coronavirus, Criticism, Enron, EY, Failure, Financial performance, Fraud, Pandemic, Revenues, Scrutiny, Transform
The Diplomat (June 19)
“Comparisons–both fair and unfair–will likely be drawn between this government’s response to the Osaka earthquake and the 3.11 triple disaster or the 1995 Hanshin earthquake to score political points. Abe will be under pressure to centralize command without micromanaging, to foster cooperation at the municipal level without overreaching. Though this natural disaster is not on the scale of either the 3.11 or Hanshin earthquakes, given Abe’s grim political outlook, he cannot afford any misstep under this kind of scrutiny.”
Tags: 3.11, Abe, Centralize, Cooperation, Government, Hanshin earthquake, Micromanaging, Misstep, Natural disaster, Osaka earthquake, Overreaching, Pressure, Response, Scale, Scrutiny
New York Times (October 25)
“The Chinese government plans to introduce codes for some 3,000 Chinese characters as part of a grand project, known as the China Font Bank, to digitize 500,000 characters previously unavailable in electronic form.” Admirable in many respects, this massive expansion of the 80,000 or so current Unicode characters will also bring a downside. “Netizens who have been using obscure characters for secret or playful language to avoid government scrutiny can expect to have fewer words to hide behind.”
Tags: Characters, China, Font, Government, Netizens, Scrutiny, Unicode
Reuters (August 18)
“Short-sellers who made their names and fortunes wiping billions off Chinese and Southeast Asian companies are setting their sights on Japan after a series of accounting scandals amplified concerns about weak corporate governance there. Until recently, corporate managers in Japan have enjoyed relatively limited scrutiny of their governance standards and accounting rigor.”
Tags: China, Corporate governance, Fortunes, Japan Accounting scandals, Scrutiny, Short sellers, Southeast Asia, Standards, Weak
Institutional Investor (September Issue)
“The combination of collapsing crude oil prices, wild currency swings and heightened governance scrutiny has created a challenging environment for many of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds”.
The Economist (October 11)
Bosses today are under more scrutiny than ever. They still need to worry about the press, but they also run “the risk of being pecked by Twitter’s swarm of angry birds. Thanks to the digital revolution, chief executives now live in glass houses. An ill-judged remark can be broadcast to the world in an instant.”
Tags: Bosses, Digital revolution, Executives, Press, Remark, Risk, Scrutiny, Twitter
Institutional Investor (August Issue)
“Facing an image problem,” many Chinese companies are retreating from U.S. exchanges. “Frustrated by low valuations and investor skepticism, Chinese companies are increasingly considering delisting from U.S. stock exchanges.” Since 2009, 24 Chinese companies have delisted, often going private, from the NYSE and Nasdaq. Much investor skepticism is directed at companies that utilized reverse mergers to attain their listing, thereby avoiding the scrutiny that would accompany a normal IPO, but the skepticism has tainted even Chinese companies with solid financials.
Tags: China, Companies, Delisting, Image, Investors, IPO, Listing, Nasdaq, NYSE, Private, Reverse mergers, Scrutiny, Skepticism, Stock exchanges, U.S., Valuations
Wall Street Journal (July 7)
Amid a North American oil boom, “shipments of crude by rail have shot up sharply, as producers race to get all their new oil to market and as pipeline companies scramble to build new lines or reconfigure old ones to handle the growing volumes.” This may change. “The deadly weekend explosion of a runaway crude-carrying train in Quebec threatens to ratchet up scrutiny of rising crude-by-rail shipments on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.”
Tags: Boom, Canada, Crude, Explosion, North America, Oil, Pipeline, Producers, Quebec, Rail, Scrutiny, U.S.
Reuters (August 3)
Approximately 35% of companies in the S&P500 have used the same audit firm for 25 years or more. In fact, “Goldman Sachs has stuck with the same auditing firm since 1926, Coca Cola since 1921, General Electric since 1909 and Procter & Gamble since 1890.” Reformers argue that rotation should be required to increase scrutiny, but many oppose such a requirement.
Tags: Audit firms, Coca Cola, GE, Goldman Sachs, P&G, Rotation, S&P500, Scrutiny
