Word: auditors
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...Republican, and five went Democratic (Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina and West Virginia), with Washington's race too close to call. But in the most closely watched and heavily bankrolled races, the G.O.P. prevailed. In Missouri Matt Blunt, the son of four-term Congressman Roy Blunt, beat state auditor Claire McCaskill; the two candidates spent a combined $7.3 million, also a likely state record. And in Utah a scion of one of the state's richest families, Jon Huntsman Jr., handily trounced Scott Matheson Jr. Matheson was supposed to be the best Democratic gubernatorial hope since his father left...
...cannot fry a chicken out of an omelette. So an auditor should never assume that he can substitute for bad controls...
There's a joke in the accounting trade that the difference between a wobbly grocery cart and a corporate auditor is that the cart has a mind of its own. Very funny, unless you had invested in MCI (formerly WorldCom), which recently announced that the pretax income it reported for 2000 and 2001 was just a tad off--$74.4 billion less than it had said, after writedowns and adjustments. Outside auditors have signed off on bogus earnings reports and balance sheets at companies from Rite Aid to Xerox. In some cases, auditors dealt with corporate brass intent on concealing thievery...
...snapped on rubber ones. With their federally issued mandate to look for trouble, accountants no longer have to take a company's word that its audit policies are legit. The accountants have the power to challenge corporate ledgers with impunity--and they're raking in money doing so. "Auditors and audit committees are now in the catbird seat," says Harvard Business School professor Jay Lorsch. Companies no longer feel free to dump their auditors, for fear of sparking a public spat; no one wants to spook jittery investors, provoke shareholder lawsuits or another regulatory crackdown. "There's more respect...
...stiffens accountants' spines in part because it places them under a new federal watchdog agency that will soon start spot-checking their work. That agency, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, also has an industry moniker--Peek-a-Boo--and recently issued a stricter set of rules detailing how auditors should evaluate internal controls. Companies must test these controls regularly, and such tests must be conducted by a firm different from the company's outside auditor, to avoid conflicts of interest. The agency's chairman, former New York Federal Reserve Bank chief William McDonough, is close to finalizing joint supervision...