As London debates over the future of Big Audit, there is a minor diversion from the hefty tomes released on December 18 by the Competition & Markets Authority and the committee charged by Parliament and headed by Sir John Kingman.
Their proposals will elicit levels of sound and fury: the Kingman committee would trash the Financial Reporting Council and re-build the country’s audit regulation, and the CMA’s two-fer would inflict organizational separation on the audit practices of the large firms, and oblige FTSE 350 companies to endure “joint audits” with the participation of non-Big Four firms.
Further attention is promised, under the government-sponsored “Project Flora,” to be headed by London Stock Exchange chairman Donald Brydon, and by the Parliament’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, whose first session is scheduled for January 15.
So take passing note that on December 13 the Labour party’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell brought forth his own report – 170 pages of perfervid criticism of the history and performance of the Big Four firms. More qualified scholars will assess its legitimacy as research, while from a real-market perspective, and drained of its hyperbolic antagonism, the extended screed reduces to a menu of proposals of eye-watering impracticality.
While it appears accepted by all parties that dependable assurance on the financial statements of the world’s large companies continues to be valued by the capital markets, here are only two illustrations of the report’s departure from that context’s reality:
- “Big Four firm share of the audits of FTSE 350 companies must be capped at 50% of that market” (p. 91).
- “A new statutory body, equivalent to the National Audit Office (would) conduct real-time audits of banks, building societies, credit unions, insurers and major investment firms” (p. 70).
Neither position found favor in the CMA or Kingman reports. But the prospect of political up-take makes it useful to explore briefly the fatally flawed nature of each.
First, reduction of the Big Four’s dominant 97% market share of FTSE 350 audits would crash headlong into a stark reality: although misguided regulators have the power to legislate some sort of “market cap,” they have no answer to the question, “who would actually do the work?”
Various metrics make the same point, starting with a graphic and league table published here on September 25 and November 12 that illustrate the overwhelming scale issue: the demands of a large-company audit are simply beyond the smaller firms’ capacity in personnel, industry expertise, global presence and risk tolerance.
Looked at a different way -- the measure of materiality agreed by KPMG for Barclay’s 2017 audit was £ 225 million – compared with the latest audit practice revenues of the six UK firms below the Big Four, set out in the Labour report itself (p.22) as ranging from £ 155 million down to £ 27 million.
The two largest erstwhile candidates to supplant the Big Four have agreed. Grant Thornton, fifth-ranked by size in the UK before giving effect to the BDO/Moore Stephens merger, has foresworn competing for FTSE 350 audits. And as put by BDO UK’s chief on December 14, “BDO was not looking to make itself grow to the scale of the Big Four …’.”
As put more bluntly in the CMA submission of Serco PLC:
“The mid-tier firms do not possess the capability nor experience to undertake complex, international audits.… There is an important role for mid-tier firms to play but it is not the audit of complex, international companies.”
Nor do they have an alternative supply of talent, as poaching in volume from the Big Four will not happen. The collapse of Arthur Andersen in 2002 taught that restive senior personnel have alternatives to remaining on the bull’s-eye of private practice, from which they fled in large numbers. And in any event, critics could scarcely welcome a market re-shaped by migration of alumni from the Big Four whose performance they so roundly excoriate, only to re-emerge in the smaller firms.
As for a newly authorized version of the National Audit Office (here, for short, “NNOA”) to audit the country’s financial sector, there is a glaring list of disabilities – here to note only three:
First, referring back to previously-cited Barclays Bank, some two-thirds of its revenue is derived internationally. An NNAO would be obliged to rely on Big Four firms for help outside the UK, there being no alternate sources – non-UK firms unwilling to be subordinated to a foreign bureaucracy for politicized supervision and liability.
At the same time, while the Labour report criticizes the Big Four’s supervision and control of their international networks (see p. 64), a NNAO itself would be no more able to spot or prevent a remote rogue trader, the likes of Nick Leeson in the Singapore office of Barings.
Second, what of the UK operations of financial institutions headquartered elsewhere? Of the world’s twenty largest investment banks, only Barclays and HSBC are based in the UK, where they compete with such formidable multi-nationals as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citgroup, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.
Given their percentage of the UK sector, the mission of a credible NNOA would be undercut by leaving those audits status quo in the hands of the Big Four. But if it did attempt to audit their UK operations, could it expect its work to be accepted globally by the banks themselves, their ex-UK auditors from the Big Four, their own principal regulators, or globally-oriented investors?
Third, in any event, the UK banks are subject to extensive ex-UK oversight and regulation. For example, Barclays and HSBC with their securities listed in the US must be audit-compliant with the rules of both the SEC and the PCAOB.
That means that an NNAO would have to register and submit itself to the inspection process of the PCAOB. Its performance would be subject to liability under the American securities laws, on a “joint and several” basis for any performance shortcoming, and with no SEC-permissible cap or limitation.
It is for the political scientists to reconcile these real-world exposures with Labour’s antipathy toward foreign entanglements and diminished British sovereignty, as on display in the Brexit debates. But with the billions in fines paid by non-US banks growing out of the financial crises of 2007-2008, and the current overhang of the FDIC’s judgment for $ 635 million against PwC over its audits of Colonial Bank, a British civil servant would be brave indeed to serve as signing partner for an NNAO audit of a UK-based bank.
Further detail would only be-labour these issues or the many others in the shadow government’s report, when there are more pressing concerns. For now, thanks for joining this discussion. Please share with friends and colleagues. Comments are invited and welcome, and subscription sign-up is easy and free – both at the Main page.
In simple terms, no chance in hell for any reform. And there are many who lead for reform who just have a testimonial or title. They are trying, however.
Posted by: Michael Corcoran | January 14, 2019 at 08:12 PM