April 20th, 2013 Trust in UK financial regulation and auditing cannot be rebuilt unless John Griffith-Jones (pictured right) steps down as chairman of the Financial Conduct Authority, writes HBOS whistleblower Paul Moore, who is also calling for a public inquiry into KPMG’s pre-crash audits of the collapsed bank HBOS. The need for such an inquiry was reinforced on 11 April, [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Qfinance Date: June 18th, 2012 I was surprised and exasperated to learn last week that chancellor George Osborne has rubber-stamped the appointment of John Griffith-Jones, the senior partner of KPMG, as chairman-designate of the Financial Conduct Authority, one of the two financial regulators that will take over from the soon-to-be-disbanded FSA. As [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 18th, 2011 (minor edits March 31st, 2013) One of Fred Goodwin’s first acts on being appointed RBS’s chief executive on March 6, 2000 was to sack PWC as auditors and to wheel in his ‘alma mater’, Deloitte & Touche. Ex-insiders suggest this was because Goodwin believed that [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: December 18th, 2011 KPMG was already auditing Halifax when the ex-building society merged with Bank of Scotland a decade ago, and the audit firm took over responsibility for auditing HBOS books from September 2001. The firm fulfilled this function until HBOS had to be rescued via a shotgun [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: October 2nd, 2011 The “Big Four” accountancy firms, whose complacency and dereliction of duty were major contributors to the banking crisis that tipped the UK into recession, could be getting their comeuppance at the hands of the European Union. The story of Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PWC [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: QFINANCE Date: July 11th, 2011 Accountancy has changed beyond recognition since the 1970s. At that time the accountancy professor Roy Sidebotham wrote: “There seems to be no limit to the optimism of businessmen… which the growing complexity of the market opens up. The first line of defence of investors and creditors is the [...]
June 26th, 2011 My work on the flawed nature of “mark-to-market” accounting and IFRS accounting standards has been included as supporting evidence in attempts by Steve Baker, the Conservative MP for Wycombe, to introduce to the UK parliament a private members bill that would transform how banks report their financial performance. Baker, a former Lehman [...]
March 30th, 2011 Here is Lord MacGregor, a former Conservative chief secretary of the Treasury, unveiling the hard-hitting and long-awaited conclusions of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee’s report into audit profession. This is an inquiry I’ve been following with great interest and which I’ve written on Qfinance (Scrap mark-to-market accounting or face further [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: February 20th, 2011 A CORPORATE whistleblower’s eight-year battle over his claims that Scottish Widows policyholders were deprived of £1.5 billion during the Lloyds takeover is to be the subject of an English high court hearing. Graham Senior-Milne, a former internal auditor at Lloyds TSB and Scottish Widows, is [...]
January 29th, 2011 The many inquiries into the financial crisis have turned over plenty of stones but have failed to find any smoking guns. But the House of Lords economic affairs committee’s inquiry “Auditors: market concentration and their role” is making strides in identifying and maybe rooting out the accounting shenanigans that lay at the [...]