“Is Today’s Audit Sustainable?” – Talking With the Academics

 How appealing is our national capital in the dog days of summer? To count a couple ways: The New York Mets – that city’s excuse for a second baseball team – came to town to finish the month of July, and wilted under the hospitality of the Nationals by the record score of 25 - 4. Meanwhile elected law-makers showed unusual bi-partisanship – members of the House of Representatives all bolted for August and even the Senate, over Mitch McConnell’s whining, is taking next week off.

As an exciting way to observe the season, how about a massive convention hotel chock full of academics from around the country and the globe – the annual knees-up of the American Accounting Association.

I’ll be there, and grateful for the opportunity. On Monday morning the 6^th, I will lead a discussion under the title, “Is Today’s Audit Sustainable? Structural Challenges in the Model.”

Themes will be the viability of the current Big Audit model and the capacity of the large firms to withstand the financial, structural and regulatory pressures on their ability to provide services to the world’s large companies.

It’s a target-rich topic – addressed in detail in my book, “Count Down: The Past, Present and Uncertain Future of the Big Four Accounting Firms” – from Emerald Books (2d ed. 2017), also Amazon in the US or the UK).

Among many current items of interest are the recent $ 625 million damages award in the FDIC’s litigation against PwC over its audit of Colonial Bank, the government and regulatory focus in South Africa on KPMG’s work for the politically-connected Gupta family interests, the € 6 billion hole in the accounts of global conglomerate Steinhoff, and this year’s commencement in London of no fewer than three separate official inquiries into the roles and performance of the large accounting firms and the structure and competence of the agencies charged with their regulatory oversight.

I’ll be joined by Martin Martinoff, over from London in his role with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, where he leads that body’s initiative on the future of the accountancy and finance profession.

It’s all at the Gaylord Convention Center, at National Harbor. If in the vicinity, find us and join the conversation. If unable, at least please check out my book. In any event, keep cool and enjoy the summer.

 

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