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More thoughts on the resurrected Andersen brand. Part 3

Leave a Comment / Audits, Pondering / By

Here are a few more articles discussing the acquisition of the Andersen brand name by a tax-only accounting firm. My previous articles here and here.

9/8 – re:The Auditors – More on My Reuters Breakingviews Column: The Andersen Tax Name Grab – Francine McKenna brings in more background and other articles on the return of the Andersen brand.

She even quotes the last part of my previous post which said that if a small portion of the worldwide CFOs think the Andersen name denotes quality then there is huge market for the formerly named WTAS firm.

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Internal control, 1860s edition – safes

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

(All photos by James Ulvog are from the Wells Fargo museum in Old Town park in San Diego.)

There are a few basics of internal control you will always hear from your CPA. The concepts have been around a looooong time.

Things like split access to the safe. Also, use storage containers that would reveal any unauthorized access.

Those concepts were used on the stagecoaches in the 1860s as shown at the Wells Fargo Museum in San Diego.

The strong boxes used to transport gold and currency were extremely rugged. You can see pictures above and below that I took while touring the museum last year. Several things are quite visible.

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On capital punishment of organizations – Arthur Andersen and Penn State – corporate death versus mild sanctions

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Jim Peterson explores the hesitancy our society has to carry out capital punishment on seriously misbehaving organizations.  See his post, Of Crimes and Punishments – And Where Shall Justice Be Found?

He starts by pondering a question from a retired Arthur Andersen partner. The retired CPA wonders if the conviction of a mid-level manager in the Roman Catholic Church who hid abuse by priests will result in the indictment of senior-level executives or the church itself. The painful irony felt by the questioner is that Arthur Andersen was indicted and put out of business because of the bad behavior by one partner and his audit team in following the bad advice of their general counsel.

Essentially, the penalty for Arthur Andersen was capital punishment. Not so for the Catholic Church, Penn State football, or a long string of financial institutions in the news during recent years.

The question is when does our society carry out capital punishment against misbehaving organizations?

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Another reason IFRS are a really bad idea

2 Comments / Accounting / By

All economies, cultures, and societies operate the same way, right?

I just realized that’s a fundamental underlying concept of IFRS. One set of accounting rules can be applied consistently in all nations regardless of the divergence of legal systems, regulatory structures, ethical frameworks, and general worldviews.

I realized that is yet one more severe conceptual failure in IFRS after reading Global Accounting Rules – An Unfeasible Aim by professors Stella Fearnley and Shyam Sunder. David Albrecht has reprinted their op-ed in his blog post, UK Prof and USA Prof Against Global Accounting Rules.

Here is the key aha! sentence for me: …

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