Underwriters, rating agencies, financial analysts and auditors all perform important roles in the financial system and serve us well, otherwise the service fees these institutions have generated for decades would be hard to explain.
The recent financial crisis presented auditors and, by extension, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act audit reforms, with their first big test since these reforms were put into place.
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PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte pointed to studies casting doubt on whether changing auditors improves financial reporting.
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Furthermore, when auditors certify financial statements, they rely on records and representations made to them by senior management.
Throughout the period of review, examination, and introspection on the causes and solutions to the latest financial crisis, the auditors have stayed well above the fray.
The Working Group on Lessons Learned from the Financial Crisis strongly recommends that the PCAOB launch an in-depth study into the role auditors played in the financial crisis.
In the interest of maintaining financial and social relationships, the auditors did not sufficiently challenge and expose survival instincts and financial incentives on behalf of shareholders and the public.
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Auditors helped the financial companies forestall reporting problems, which led to a bigger meltdown later on.
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The state certainly could use the money from fines, but we need more illumination of the role of auditors during the financial crisis.
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For three decades they have acted as quasi-official regulators of public debt markets, and yet enjoyed the fat fees of financial intermediaries, all the while escaping the brunt of attacks on bankers, auditors and the rest of the financial industry.
The Department of Enterprise and the Tourist Board said their financial predictions for the building are robust but the auditors believe there remains a risk that it will not achieve financial sustainability and that risk will need to be monitored carefully.
For the second year in a row this bureaucracy may not receive a clean financial bill of health from government auditors.
He allegedly did this by drafting the loan documents that transferred the losses off Refco's books, giving a false impression of financial health to Refco's auditors, the Justice Department's Garcia said.
Yet regulators and lawsuit-fearful auditors pressed banks and other financial firms to relentlessly knock down the book value of this subprime paper, even in cases where these obligations were being serviced in the payment of principal and interest.
Under a system borrowed from Germany, Japanese firms must appoint at least three internal auditors to keep an eye on financial management and guard shareholders' interests.
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Last month, the local authority's external auditors reported that they had uncovered shortcomings in the financial management of the service, but no further details have so far been disclosed.
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Their lobbyists succeeded in convincing legislators that, as opposed to ratings agencies who have the same business model and independence conflicts and only rate bonds versus give an opinion on the financial statements as a whole, no one could think of anything auditors had done wrong that needed reforming.
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Our professional skepticism has to be that without strong audit standards and a strong duty of care and a strong sense of clarity about what auditors do we have to be skeptical that management and financial statement preparers will provide the information voluntarily or be willing to acknowledge the significance of the information.
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No accounting firm wants to be investigated or sued because of a financial misstatement, and restatements and investigations frequently result in a change in auditors.
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The Olympus affair is likely to set in train a fairly thorough and far-reaching strengthening and tightening of Japanese codes of conduct, laws and regulations, and criminal and civil remedies to deal with false financial reporting, non-disclosure, and due diligence requirements for company auditors, and stricter and more intrusive regulation by government agencies and securities exchanges.
His report described this pre-financial crisis fraud in excruciating detail, including the smoking guns pointed at KPMG the auditors.
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On July 13, 2012, JPMorgan management, not PwC the auditors, reported that a material weakness existed in its internal control over financial reporting as of March 31, 2012.
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The audit committee was responsible for complying with parts of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which, in response to the Enron, Tyco International, and WorldCom financial scandals, sought to establish new standards for corporate boards, management, and auditors.
Internal auditors in the Welsh government inquiry found a "complete lack of oversight of the financial processes and controls" at the Swansea-based charity.
The credit crisis, and then the financial crisis, ushered in a new austerity that has re-sized audit fees and put auditors on the defensive again, looking for new services and new ways to charge new and existing clients more.
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The Congressional Oversight Panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held no public hearings with auditors.
It would be easier if auditors, as an industry, agreed it was their responsibility to detect fraud and material misstatements of the financial statements.
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