Auditing and Global Financial Crisis

Discuss about the Auditing and Global Financial Crisis.

This report discusses auditing and liability of the auditors in the context of the Global Financial crisis. Apart from this, this report states that how the auditing contributed in the global financial crisis. Besides this, it incorporates the liabilities of the auditors and the recommendation for rectifying the issues in auditing that led to financial crisis.

Global Financial Crisis:

A huge financial crisis emerged in 2007 that started from the US and affected most of the economies of the world. It was the biggest financial crisis after the great depression of 1930.  This financial crisis affected the consumers’ pockets, led to the decline of firms, banking, and financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers. This crisis triggered the illiquidity across the world, which declined the productivity of the economies, which in turn contributed in the crawling up of financial crisis across the world (Haas and Lelyveld, 2014). Over the debate of this crisis, some economist said that the accountants are responsible for the global crisis while some blamed to the auditors for the crisis. After digging deep the cause of financial crisis, it was found that it happened due to various stakeholders doing wrong things and auditors were also responsible for the financial crisis to a certain extent.

Impact of Global Financial Crisis:

Global financial crisis affected the growth of the entire world but the Australia was about to weather this crisis to a significant extent. The GDP growth of Australia was 0.4% in 2009, which indicates that it was less affected than other nations. But the banking and investment companies were mostly affected by the Global Financial Crisis.

The housing and mortgage finance institutions in US experienced a drastic decline in their cash position, which led their insolvency. During this crisis, most of the financial institutions across the world were fallen down and acquired by their close competitors at very low price that affected the growth rate of the economies. It affected the world trade that in turn affected the productivity and liquidity of the economies. As per the report of world trade organization, the global trade was declined by the 13% in 2009 from the previous year. The monetary and fiscal policies decided before the crisis, brought the quite adverse result as expected from them in development of the economy (Ait-Sahalia et al, 2012). This crisis mostly affected the mining, agricultural, manufacturing and trade, service, financial and investment, banking, and energy industry in the countries, which are linked to each other in any way. 

Global Financial Crisis led insolvency in Greece, which caused a dangerous issues related to famine and liquidity in that economy. The global financial crisis caused the slowdown in flow of finance through investment and landings in the world, which nipped down the growth of the economies. Apart from this, it reduced the export and import by the economies, which affected their GDP and National Income that created the liquidity problem and led unemployment across the world (Claessens and Horen, 2014). Due the Global Financial Crisis, the debtors become insolvent and unable to pay their loan back to the lenders, which led the failure of the banks and financial institution all over the world. It brought down the prices of assets, affected the level of production in the country and expenditure of the people, households and communities in terms of their survival.

Factors Liable for the Crisis:

There are various factors, which led to the Global Financial Crisis. These factors include rating agencies, economy ideology, and fraud, improper securitization of the loans, bad economic assumption, politics, high oil prices, and manipulation of financial statements by the firms, insolvency of Lehman Brothers, Indymac bank’s failure, shadow banking, and auditing. Auditing is a factor that is factor that is certainly a factor liable for the financial crisis across the globe.  For example, Ernst and Young audited the accounts of Lehman Brother in 2008 and they found that Lehman Brother practicing repo 105 but they did not put any objection and did not disclose it. Apart from this, PricewaterhouseCooper audited AIG statement but did not disclose the weakness of material that was being used by AIG. There is the number of fraud conducted in the auditing since 19^th century. Bernard Madoff wan launched a scheme named Ponzi in which it operated a fraudulent hedge fund of $ 60 billion. Apart from this, many companies distorted their statements, which include Enron, Tyco, Health Solution, Xerox, Bristol Myers, Citibank, WorldCom, NextCard and Kmart from US (Maxfield, 2015). Along with this, Ahold, Comroad and Parmalat companies from Europe and Resona Bank from Japan, and HIH insurance company from Australia conducted major fraud in their financial statements.

Auditing:

The history of audit was developed from the emergence of Securities and Exchange Commission. In the world, firstly audits are identified in Athens as 500 to 300 before Christ because at this time the state revenue and expenditure of Greek were verified by the state accountants. Later on, the auditing profession was developed in Italy by maintaining accounts of ships. Along with this, auditing is a systematic tool that measures how effectively a country and organization presents its accounts, statutory records, and vouchers (Stuart, 2012). Apart from this, auditing includes some specific laws, which ensures that accounts and statutory records are properly maintained.

Liability or Role of Auditors in Global Financial Crisis:

The Lehman Brother collapsed in the 2007, which flared up the financial crisis in the US. Lehman brothers manipulated its balance sheet showing that company sells its assets rather than borrowing, which led to Lehman brothers under the more critical situation and got bankrupt. Moreover, the auditor did not mention any information about ‘repo 105 transactions’, which was scheme of the bank to remove the $5o million’s assets from the balance sheet. This was the fraud by the Lehman brothers that it manipulated data. Auditors did not look deeply into the accounting statements and used questionable auditing (Bris, 2010). After collapse it was found that Ernst and Young was not closely reviewed the accounts and statements of the Lehman bank and an sue was filed against the Ernst and Young accounting firm for its malpractices under class action suits and damaging the civil legislation under the regulation of Security and Exchange Commission in US. The audit firm was accused with sufficient evidences for abetting in data manipulation. For this malpractice, Ernst and Young were charged of fine of $8.5 million by the Security and Exchange Commission. Therefore, there is legal liability of the auditors to detect the errors and frauds in the statements and take the legal actions against the firm. There is the potential liability of the auditors to ensure that the companies provided the actual information in their statements. Auditors must meet the Generally Acceptable Accounting Standards, International Accounting Standards, and International Financial Reporting Standard in auditing process. 

In eyes of the law, if the auditors do not discover the frauds and errors in the statements of the firms then he will be liable for that and punished. The auditor duty is to detect the error and fraud in the statements and take the prompt action against the fraud. Auditor’s responsibility is to review the statements of the company considering the interest of the all stakeholders rather than company if he do so, will be liable for the fraud. Enron was undergoing the huge debts since 1999, but Enron and its auditor Andersen's did not disclose any information before its stakeholders and public. They manipulated in the taxes to show high profit of company to public. In this regard, Andersen received $47.5 million from the Enron as commission for abetting in manipulation. The total of this amount $34.2 million was received for tax and audit related work. Andersen's did not consider the tax liability of company but gave profession opinion that how Enron can raise profit to influence public (Naylor, 2014). Andersen's provide external and internal audit and management consulting service at one time to the Enron that is illegal in the eye of Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. Andersen breaches the law as well as took the bribe for manipulating the data. It was found guilty of obstruction of justice and for that, the Security Exchange Commission revoked the CPA license of the Arthur Andersen and seized its right to practices the auditing further. After that, Andersen got out of its business in US.

Paragraph 9 of Article 7 of Regulation No 472/2013 of the European Parliament defines that auditors must identify the illegitimate debts of the company and find why that debt increased. Goldman Sachs did not comply with the law and aided the Greece economy in concealing its debts from the lenders, public and international financial institution. Greece was having a huge debt since 1998, which was increased by about €300 million.  The manipulation was committed to raise the funds from the other economies and international financial institutions. But in 2009, when the drastic financial crisis occurred, US increased its interest rate on amount it landed (Buchanan, 2015). Goldman Sachs consulted Greece economist that how the debts can be hided and moved out of the statement.  Goldman Sachs hided the deficits of Greece by showing the derivative instruments of worth of approximately $500 million in the statement. Goldman Sachs was sued for helping the George Jabbour who was the prime minister that time and manipulated the data to save his party from collapse. Here, they did not consider the interest of the human being, laws and their liabilities (Armitage and Ben Chu (2015). There is the potential liability of the auditors for criminal and civil offence if they infringe the rules and norms of the government in auditing process.   

Besides this, the American Home Mortgage is real estate and mortgage loan providing company. Mortgage of the company were arranged from the employees, brokers, and lenders in the market. This company was sued in 2007 for misleading and defrauding. During the declining in real estate and house pricing in US, it announced that it does not have more fund that bring its share price to $1.04 per share. It distorted its statements before the recession that was it revealed in the great recession time. It led bankruptcy of the firm, which inturn contributed to the global financial crisis. There was the liability of the firm of establishing the transparency of the statements, which could helps in prevention of the liquidity problem. According to Police Man theory, the firm should discover and disclose the actual information in the financial statements but the American Home Mortgage Corporation breached the ethical and legislative norms and for that, it was charged of $2.45million by Security and Exchange Commission (SEC, 2016). The director and accounting officer was barred from the company for five years. Deloitee was the auditor of AHM that was sued by the AHM. AHM said that Deloitte did not detect the error because of that it suffered the loss and sued against the auditor for paying $75 million as fine.

Auditors must be honest with their profession and maintain the trust of the public on the auditor’s report of the statements as investors use the report to analysis with a view to invest their funds. It is a liability of the auditors under the regulatory system of Security exchange commission to provide the actual information, comply with law, and work for the interest of the public first.  The auditor is expected to use of his profession skills and experience in valuation of assets of company, reviewing the accounts of the company but not expected to provide the assured prediction of the future of the company. He must mention in his report the risk linked with the investment in the firm. Furthermore, AIG (American international group) is a multinational insurance corporation also manipulated the data for pilling up the demand of collaterals.  Pwc was audited the accounts of AIG. For the conducting manipulation in data, AIG and PwC use negative basis adjustments approach to reduce the loss of $5.1 billion to $1.5 billion in financial statements and auditor PwC aided AIG in manipulating the data rather taking any action against the firm for the fraud. It distorted its statements before the global recession that was declared at the time of recession. They manipulated the financial data and did not disclose actual accounting data to stakeholders. According to policeman theory, the PwC auditors should have to disclose the actual information of the firm and give independent opinion to firm for the adjustments but PwC did not abide by the laws and ethical norms and values in the auditing.  The shareholders of AIG claimed against Pwc and for the financial restatements and $ 1.64 billion regulatory settlements.   The Pwc was charged of fine of $97.5 million by Security and Exchange Commission under the settle met of suit of class action (Hays, D. (2016). Along with this, the auditor from the Pwc Mr. Greenberg and the Chief Financial Officer Mr. Howard Smith were ousted from their respective companies as they are alleged by the shareholder for preparing misleading statements.  Auditor must keep the shareholders interest in the mind when auditing the accounts of the company and must try to discover the error and ensure the quality of the statements but must not be involved in the fraud with company breaching the law and neglecting the ethical norms and values.    

Conclusion:

From the above analysis, it can be concluded that as the Global Financial Crisis occur, the many misleading, misrepresentation, distortion, and fraud case in auditing erupted. They are alleged and sued under the suit of class action. They faced many challenges due to the occurrence of the financial crisis. Most of the auditors fined and many are jailed as well and ousted from the firm as they were accused by the investors, stakeholders for the fraud.

Recommendation:

There should be proper and stringent rules and guidelines that should be abided by the audit firms in the process of auditing to ensure the quality of audit and accuracy of the statements of the firms being audited. The regulatory institutions such as The International Federation of Accountants and International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board should develop the effective regulatory system with strict penalties that regulate the practices of the auditors. Along with this, regulators should meet the Generally Acceptable Accounting Standards and International Accounting Standards in their auditing process that will profess the quality of information provided by them. There should be a system for the auditing, which would be transparent that creates the trust among public and the chance of fraud will be minimized.  Along with this, auditors should assess the statements deeply rather than to use the checklist method or box ticking method for audit to go beyond the financial statement as it provide the extra information other than financial statements. Effective auditing of the statements can be ensured through crosscheck of the statements by the internal and external audits under the guidelines of regulatory bodies. There should be some ethical norms and values in the organization for the following in the auditing process. It will reduce the fraud and cheating with the stakeholders of the company.

References:

Ait-Sahalia, Y., Andritzky, J., Jobst, A., Nowak, S., and Tamirisa, N. (2012). Market response to policy initiatives during the global financial crisis. Journal of International Economics, 87(1), 162-177.   

Armitage, J. and Ben Chu (2015) Greek debt crisis: Goldman Sachs could be sued for helping hide debts when it joined euro[Online].Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greek-debt-crisis-goldman-sachs-could-be-sued-for-helping-country-hide-debts-when-it-joined-euro 10381926.html (Accessed: 7 September 2016).

Bris, A. (2010). THE LEHMAN BROTHERS CASE Available at: https://www.imd.org/research/challenges/upload/TC039-10PDF.pdf (Accessed: 7 September 2016).

Buchanan, R. (2015). Greece debt crisis explained: A history of just how the country landed itself in such a mess [Online].Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greece-debt-crisis-explainer-a-history-of-how-the-country-landed-itself-in-such-a-mess-10365798.html (Accessed: 8 September 2016).

Chandler, R. and Edwards, J. (2014). Recurring Issues in Auditing (RLE Accounting): Professional Debate 1875-1900. UK: Routledge.

Claessens, S. and Horen, N. (2014 ). The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Banking Globalization[Online].Available at: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp14197.pdf (Accessed: 8 September 2016).

Hays, D. (2016) PwC To Pay $97.5M For Role In AIG Accounting Mess. Available at: http://www.propertycasualty360.com/2008/10/06/pwc-to-pay--97-5m-for-role-in-aig-accounting-mess  (Accessed: 7 September 2016).

Haas, R. and Lelyveld, I. (2014). Multinational banks and the global financial crisis: Weathering the perfect storm?. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 46 (s1), pp.333-364.

Maxfield, J. (2015). 25 Major Factors That Caused or Contributed to the Financial Crisis[Online]. Available at: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/28/25-major-factors-that-caused-or-contributed-to-the.aspx (Accessed: 7 September 2016).

Naylor, T. (2014). How The Arthur Anderson And Enron Fraud Changed Accounting Forever [Online].Available at: http://www.benzinga.com/markets/14/04/4429482/how-the-arthur-anderson-and-enron-fraud-changed-accounting-forever  (Accessed: 7 September 2016).

SEC (2016). Addressing Misconduct that led to or Arose from the financial crisis[Online]. Available at: https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/enf-actions-fc.shtml (Accessed: 7 September 2016).

Stuart, I. (2012). Auditing and assurance services: an applied approach. US: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.  

 

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