[MA blog]: Have Auditors failed us ... Buzz it on Yahoo

Prem Sikka in Guardian discusses on Auditors fees for giving a clean chit to the companies whose survival is doubtful now.


"The deepening financial crisis brings daily news of corporate collapses and bailouts that plunder the taxpayers' pockets at an unprecedented scale. Innocent people are losing jobs, homes, pensions and investments. Each collapse shows that highly paid directors had little idea of the value of company assets, liabilities, income, costs, profits and financial health. This has been accompanied by one constant factor: the silence of the auditors. Auditors collected large amounts in fees and dished out clean bills of health."

The government of Iceland has taken control of Glitnir, the third largest bank in the country, and injected €600m. The bank's 2007 accounts received a clean bill of health (page 69) from PricewaterhouseCoopers with an assurance, "We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our audit opinion". Auditors collected (page 93) ISK364m (£1.8m) in fees, including ISK218m in consultancy fees.

Read the full article on Guardian

The salaries of the companies that failed

Lehman Brothers - Richard Fuld $ 715 K salary and $ 6.20 million bonus. According to New York Times, he took half a billion dollars in compensation between 1993 - 2007.

Mail on Sunday reports Senior staff at beleaguered Northern Rock have received secret bonuses doubling their salaries ?