Guarding the guardians
Soul-searching for SA’s auditors
Shareholders from the JSE’s big companies are more readily expressing their views on auditor rotation
If they can’t be trusted to pack envelopes, should we be trusting them with the global financial economy? If you listened closely during the enormous snafu at last week’s Oscars ceremony, in between the gasps of shock you might have heard guffaws from people who’ve long suspected that all of the "Big Four" audit firms are actually run by humans. This means that they not only make mistakes with envelopes, but that they also might not be quite as independent as they should be after decades-long client relationships. It’s not just in Hollywood that the Big Four are finding themselves under attack. Across the globe regulators and concerned shareholders are trying to work out how to exert some control over what is possibly the most powerful, least transparent oligopoly in the world. That their options are limited became more evident when, in the wake of the Enron collapse in 2001, Arthur Andersen was forced to suffer the consequences of its inept auditing and the Big Five became the Big ...
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