If something goes wrong on an audit, whose fault is it? Is it the partner’s fault or the junior member of staff’s fault? Over in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper has provided some interesting commentary on a legal case that is currently taking place concerning an audit undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The background to [...]

We blogged earlier this year about Michel Barnier, the EU internal market commissioner announcing plans to issue new laws which would dramatically impact the “Big 4” (namely Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC.) Well, these changes have now got a bit closer as the draft law has just been released. In an attempt to [...]

Meet two companies – Oracle and Autonomy. A lot of you will probably have heard of Oracle but probably less of you have heard of Autonomy. Oracle is a business software and hardware systems company whilst Autonomy develops search software. Oracle’s Chief Executive is Larry Ellison and Autonomy’s Chief executive is Mike Lynch. Interestingly enough [...]

The Financial Times or FT as it is generally known, is a great newspaper. First printed way back in 1888 by James Sheridan and Horatio Bottomley, the FT specialises in business and financial news. You can find a lot of information in the FT. Information ranging from share prices to the latest business activities can [...]

Share incentive schemes are a good way to motivate and reward senior executive employees. As far as I’m aware though there are very few supermarket checkout operators that find themselves eligible for £100,000 worth of company shares as part of their remuneration package. Mr Jeffrey Adams who worked on the checkout at Tesco’s Burton-on-Trent store [...]

Taylor Bean & Whitaker were one of the largest privately held mortgage lenders in the US. Paul Allen was their CEO and involved in all the key areas of the business. Unfortunately for a lot of people Mr Allen also became involved in the fraud which led to the Taylor Bean business being closed down [...]

How much would you try to steal from your employer if you work for ING bank and you’re an accountant? Hopefully most of you would not try to steal anything from your employer but if you were a lady by the name of Rajina Rita Subramaniam who worked for ING in Sydney, Australia for 20 [...]

It seems that Deloitte has had a spot of bother in dealing with one of its Chinese clients. When they initially won the audit for Longtop they were no doubt very pleased. Longtop Financial Technologies Ltd., to give it its full name, is a Hong Kong-based maker of financial software. In 2007 it raised $210 [...]

One of my friends is a TV producer and he’s recently been working on a documentary that just amazed me and I thought you may enjoy hearing of. In 2007, Gene Morrison was convicted of a number of serious offences, including perjury.  The reason for this is that he had successfully posed as an expert [...]

ACCA and CIMA are two of the leading professional bodies and as providers of some of the best finance and business qualifications in the world they have ethics at their core. If you take a step back though, they are arguably in competition with each other and here’s an important question: Have they been ethical [...]