The View | The oddities of audit, and what needs to be done to put things right
Findings of a comprehensive survey highlight some devastating conclusions, none more so than who’s protecting the interests of minority shareholders at audit time?
In practically any other field of commerce, if 40 per cent of those engaged in the business were making a hash of it there would be nothing short of an outcry – but not when it comes to the dull-yet-vital world of auditing.
A deafening silence has greeted the findings of a comprehensive survey highlighting this pretty devastating conclusion.
The survey comes from the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators, which recently completed a review of 918 audits of listed companies around the world that had been conducted by the biggest auditors on the planet and found that four out of every 10 had serious problems.
Those under review involved crucial business operations such as merger and acquisition deals and other complex situations that rank as being beyond the ‘mere’ business of auditing books for taxation purposes.
But even without this study, there’s been growing unease about the quality of global auditors’ work, that was highlighted so brutally with the collapse of Carillion, the huge UK-based construction business which was carrying out a wide range of services for the British state.