LWAZI BAM: The battle to restore trust in auditing
It’s been a gruelling few years for SA’s auditors. But SA, like others globally, must confront what went wrong
Howard Pim — the founder of one of the firms that later became Deloitte — is considered the founding father of SA accounting. Born in Ireland in 1862 to a family of merchants, he arrived in SA in 1890 to work for Cecil John Rhodes as auditor of the British SA Co. But he soon become renowned as somebody with the highest ethical values.
Research by academic Kristen van Lelyveld recounts how Pim’s commitment to improving the circumstances of all races on the mines, including the Chinese, led to some mining houses refusing to use him as their auditor. This led to the term "Pimmed" being coined: the "loss of emoluments for reasons of principle"...
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