Seems like everyone’s favourite (well, favourite because there is often very little choice nowadays) retailer has been up to some naughty messing about with spreadsheets.

Sounds like the proverbial is going to hit the fan, but I’m left wondering (again) about the role of their auditors (PWC) in all this. The obvious potential for leniency as a result of being paid a sodding great wad by the ‘client’ is something that always makes me chuckle.

Who would want to be the partner who ‘lost’ the Tesco gig by exposing bad practice?

PWC have history for this shit (as i think you’re alluding to), and like you it always amazes me how they come out clean! The [old] refinery in Exssex is a prime example of how they well and truely **** up, yet came away with a large pay packet, then look at the banks as well!

Mind you, my experience of PWC is that they employ straight out of Uni not a fooking clue people to actually do the auditing, then some other [well paid] monkey further up the food chain prints the report – there’s an adage about foundations in there somewhere!!

These are half year results.

Sounds like sharp practice from one of the divisions trying to deliver its numbers. The audit committee will be both hopping mad and also extremely embarrassed.

It is shocking, after adjustment they are only going to make £2.4billion. it is only down by £400million. mere pennies……

At my old company our KPMG auditor arrived one morning and one of our folks came into the office, saying “someone has just hit your car”. Sure enough scratch on my car and the next space car. Asking around it was the auditors car. He first denied it was his car, then that he’d hit mine. When I offered to go get the CTV he said “can we sort this for cash”. I contacted KPMG – he never came back.

Every fiddle helps.

Mind you, my experience of PWC is that they employ straight out of Uni not a fooking clue people to actually do the auditing

Correct – a lot of the junior (and middle-ranking) auditors I have had dealings with couldn’t find a snowball in a blizzard.

We have seen this before (when the big accounting firms had to separate off their management consulting arms in the wake of Enron). Again – where does the desire to be by the book become corrupted by the need to keep the client?

The new Chief Exec must be wondering what he has has let himself in for.

The new Chief Exec must be wondering what he has has let himself in for.

Or he is playing a very good game – get all the bad news out of the way (and pin that firmly back in time to before his arrival), then make improvements versus a corrected base.

Conjecture has it that he would have known about some of these practices whilst he was at Unilever and has decided to make a clean break of it now he is in situ.

Whatever – Tesco are rightly taking a panning in the markets and the press.

Scary how quickly a previously dominant brand can decline…

From the Beeb

Tesco chairman Sir Richard Broadbent rebuffed criticism that he should have discovered the issue sooner. “Things are always unnoticed until they have been noticed.”

Step aside Donald Rumsfeld, there’s a new kid on the block 🙂

Or he is playing a very good game – get all the bad news out of the way (and pin that firmly back in time to before his arrival), then make improvements versus a corrected base.

+1

No doubt he took a look at the make-up of the numbers, and decided some of them weren’t for him and/or a bit edgy/political/’improvements’.

As someone suggested on the media earlier,perhaps we should all send our old calculators, abacuses and books on sums, accountancy, numbers etc to the free post address on their web site, they obvioulsly may need them.

But the above may be your personal responce and not one that most could honestly agree and condone, but every little helps.

KPMG probably benefit from having the government as a major client. I wonder why the accountancy standards people don’t investigate their audit skills