Last week, The Wall Street Journal ran a Page One story on the new role of the Securities and Exchange Commission: policing the world’s securities market. But the Commission already has so much to track: public companies, the stock exchanges, brokers-dealers, mutual funds, and now hedge funds…not to mention the myriad minutiae of governance, from […]
Karr Susan Schott
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Halfway Through The E&Y Ban: Slim Pickings For Public Companies
As of last week, Ernst & Young is about halfway through one of the toughest punishments ever doled out by the SEC for auditor misconduct. On April 16, 2004, the Big Four accounting firm was barred from accepting new SEC audit clients for a six-month period. The ban, which ends in late October, was related […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Internal Controls Get Poor Detection Marks; Numbers Misleading
In a recent study, The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners presented findings that bring to light a number of questions about the effectiveness—or seeming ineffectiveness—of internal controls as a detection measure for financial statement fraud and abuse. According to the ACFE’s 2004 Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, which looked at the […]