As I described in my ebook, Over Here and Under Taxed, Amazon, like Google, has played a tax game in the UK. It claims its UK operation is run from Luxembourg. Amazon UK merely services it on its behalf, only running the warehouses that supply the goods. Under OECD rules this, they say, avoids them having a
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From the FT this morning: The head of the US audit regulator has made a fresh call for senior auditors to be stripped of their anonymity as details continued to emerge from the KPMG insider trading scandal. James Doty, chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, said investors were in favour of ending the secrecy
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The Bank of England issued a statement yesterday saying that the UK’s major banks and building societies are currently underestimating their losses by £50 billion. I think that’s true. But why didn’t they say as a result that the accounts of the banks in question are not true and fair? Or that they cannot have been properly audited as a result? And that this
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The Telegraph has noted: PIRC has calculated the amount of bad debts the banks may have to write off in coming years but have yet to subtract from profits, together with other items such as deferred bonuses not booked. HSBC, which is the biggest bank by assets, was shown to have £10.4bn of hidden losses, the Royal
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The FT reports: The UK arm of Ernst & Young and one of its former partners have been accused of misconduct in relation to their auditing of Farepak, the Christmas hamper savings club that collapsed six years ago. The Financial Reporting Council, the accounting and corporate governance regulator, said on Thursday it had filed a
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The FT notes this morning: An array of institutional investors has joined forces to resist attempts to dilute audit reforms that would affect listed companies across the European Union. Amid signs legislators will ditch aggressive proposals put forward by the European Commission last year, the shareholders say major changes are needed to make auditors more independent of
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In June the Telegraph announced: Top auditor John Griffith-Jones will head the UK’s new Financial Conduct Authority from next year. Mr Griffith-Jones currently chairs the UK operations of KPMG, one of the world’s “Big Four” auditing firms. Today we learned that Ian Barlow is toi be the new Chair of H M Revenue & Customs. As
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My friend and colleague Prof Prem Sikka has argued since time immemorial (or so it seems) that auditing is a corrupt profession. He is, of course, right. His extensive CV provides the links to all the evidence you need – or just read this, one of his many accounts of this. I think PWC’s failure to highlight
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Who is most responsible for Barclays? Well, without doubt the directors of Barclay, a body in whom I am sure the public has remarkably little confidence. That’s where the buck stops, of course. But when a bank is about to implode so badly that the chairman, chief executive and chief operating officer al feel it necessary to resign within 24 hours
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