Blog Profile / Accounting Watchdog
| URL : | http://blogs.forbes.com/francinemckenna/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Business & Finance | |
| Posts on Regator: | 131 | |
| Posts / Week: | 1.1 | |
| Archived Since: | February 24, 2011 | |
Blog Post Archive
Marissa Mayer’s Pregnancy: What Does Yahoo Have to Disclose?
, !’s new CEO starts her job today. She is not only taking a big job at a company that’s had its share of issues and five CEOs in the last five years. Mayer is also six months pregnant. She disclosed that news to Fortune Magazine three hours after announced her appointment. ’s press release [...]
Auditors All Fall Down; PFGBest and MF Global Frauds Reveal Weak Watchdogs
Ring-a-ring-a-roses, A pocket full of posies; Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down. Kate Greenaway’s 1881 edition of Mother Goose; or, the Old Nursery Rhymes Never again, they said, after $1.6 billion of customer money “vaporized” at. But now there’s been another big fraud against customers in the futures industry. This time the CEO of PFGBest – [...]
What The SEC, And The PCAOB, Still Don’t Admit About Chinese Frauds
I’ve written a long post at my site, re: The Auditors on the ongoing efforts of the SEC, and the PCAOB, to get a handle on the pervasive fraud by Chines-based companies listed on US exchanges. I have never been bullish on China for investors or otherwise. In fact, I fail to see why any [...]
Barclays Manipulates Libor While Auditor PwC Snoozes
What do, JP Morgan, and have in common? They are all examples of risk management and audit failures and the auditor of all of them is PricewaterhouseCoopers. It seems like only yesterday when everyone was asking me if Ernst & Young would be the next global audit firm to buckle under the weight of [...]
Uncontrolled Risk Taking, Not Bad Accounting, Did MF Global In
John Corzine got the chief executive job at in early 2010 for one reason: Chris Flowers bailed the firm out in 2008 after a wheat trader’s shenanigans cost it $140 million. Flowers was growing impatient with constant losses and Corzine was brought in to return the firm to profitability. ’s core business was losing money, squeezed [...]
Accounting For The JP Morgan Whale Trades
$2 billion in losses. And a world of pain for “Don’t Regulate Me” Dimon. Am I shocked that no mainstream media outlet has yet sought to explain in accounting terms the stunning announcement made by a week ago last Thursday of a $2 billion loss on a series of trades made by JP Morgan’s Chief [...]
Chance Meetings At Milken Global Conference 2012
I subscribe to the philosophy of business conference attendance. Carney, editor of CNBC’s NetNet blog, has a decidedly different view of his duties than the typical print personality who does some on-air duties when the whim hits him: When I’m not in one of the panels, I’m typically in the Tiki bar next to the [...]
Where Did GSA Get The Money For Las Vegas? Not From Taxpayers
How did the General Services Administration, GSA, afford the lavish party in 2010 that’s become the butt of jokes, even from the President? Every other Federal agency is having a budget crisis; cutbacks are everywhere. Although the Vegas “conference” took place in 2010, that was not so long ago. Federal spending has been under scrutiny [...]
Groupon: Ernst & Young’s Accounting Challenged Client
This story appears as a sidebar on page 154 for the feature, How Zynga, Facebook and Groupon’s Go-To Auditor Rewrites Accounting Rules, in the May 7 edition of Forbes magazine. shows how social media companies can game the numbers. Social media accounting games aren’t limited to games companies. Witness Ernst & Young’s lightning-rod client,. Before going [...]
How Zynga, Facebook and Groupon’s Go-To Auditor Rewrites Accounting Rules
This story appears in the May 7 edition of Forbes magazine on page 150. Zynga, Facebook and all use an independent auditor that is simultaneously inventing the rules for social media accounting. Somewhere, Arthur Andersen is shuddering. BY FRANCINE MCKENNA ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETER AND MARIA HOEY FOR FORBES For 26 million digital farmers working their [...]
Facebook’s Instagram Play: S-1 Told You There’d Be Days Like This
When legislators, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and President Obama made the argument for the Jumpstart Our Startups Act (JOBS Act), the basic premise was that the cost of current legal and regulatory compliance was causing companies to wait longer to go public, to not go public in the United States or not IPO at all. (This [...]
Chesapeake Energy: CEO McClendon Serves Himself First
You have to wonder whether ‘s Board of Directors and General Counsel Henry Hood have been overcome by fumes. The company’s response to inquiries from Thomson Reuters’ special investigation by Grow and Anna Driver is not only disingenuous it’s borderline delusional. McClendon has borrowed as much as $1.1 billion in the last three years [...]
Groupon: Where Were The Auditors?
Last week was Groupon’s big week, although not in a good way. What happened? Well, the premier source of daily deal dish got knocked down a few more pegs after announcing a revision to 4th quarter earnings and the announcement by management that there was a material weakness in internal controls over financial reporting [...]
The Story Behind Today’s MF Global Congressional Testimony
If the only stories you read about MF Global come from the major daily media reports and congressional testimony, you’ll miss most of the truth and quickly become confused about who knew what and when. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Reuters, in particular, have gone back and forth on the story many [...]
Coming Up: Speaking Engagements
This past week at the PCAOB Forums in DC, Deloitte Deputy CEO Bob Kueppers stopped by the press table to introduce himself. Mr. Kueppers asked if I was really “”. Rumor was I was not a real person, just a virtual thorn in every Big Four firm’s side. “I’m no hologram,” I told him. Want [...]
Auditor Independence and Auditor Rotation: The PCAOB Forum Day 1
[View the story "PCAOB Solicits Feedback On Auditor Independence" on Storify]
Auditor Independence and Auditor Rotation: The PCAOB Forum Day 2
[View the story "PCAOB Solicits Input On Auditor Independence and Auditor Rotation Concept Release - Day 2" on Storify]
Why Did IGT Hire John Vandemore? Quick Answer is PwC
You may think it’s a good thing that International Gaming Technology CEO Patti Hart seems more focused on the accounting and financial qualifications of her new CFO, John Vandemore, than on whether he is a gaming industry insider. But local journalists and analysts, used to talking to someone talking the language of gaming, are confused. [...]
MF Global: It’s Not Over Until It’s Over
Despite several reports over the last few weeks to the contrary, I don’t believe the missing client assets at have “vaporized” nor do I believe the trail to the truth – and civil or criminal prosecutions – has gone cold. What has disappeared is any will on the part of regulators and prosecutors to [...]
Next Steps For Olympus Don’t Include Dumping Auditor Ernst & Young
The various investigations of, the Japanese camera maker whose multi-billion dollar, multi-year fraud was exposed by its own CEO after he was fired, drag on. The latest investigative report is the product of three “independent” attorneys hired by the company to look at the roles of the company’s current and former auditors – [...]