NEWS ANALYSIS: Numbers win in auditing’s narrow scope
The KPMG-Gupta saga is the latest and probably one of the highest-profile examples of what is known as the ‘expectation gap’
For years, the South African audit profession has scored top position in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) competitiveness report. This hardly smacks of an industry in crisis — until you scratch below the headlines to discover that, in 2016, this "hard fact" was based on the opinion of just 44 South African business people who responded to the WEF’s survey. In 2015, the number of respondents was a tad higher at 50. It’s likely many of the respondents are accountants. So it seems not only does the profession enjoy the relative freedom of self-regulation, it also enjoys the benefits of uncritical self-promotion. But, thanks in part to one of our largest audit firms, KPMG, things may be about to change.News that the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors was probing KPMG’s audits of Linkway Trading came as a pleasant surprise to the many South Africans who had begun to despair of anyone being formally investigated for anything in the ever-widening Gupta state capture scandal. Board...
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