Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

9am Lowdown: Senior MP calls for investigation of KPMG

by
14th Dec 2015
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Good morning, everyone! Here’s the news:

* * *

Senior MP calls for investigation of KPMG

The head of parliament’s Treasury Committee said the FCA made a “serious mistake” in not opening a formal investigation into KPMG over its audit of HBOS bank before it collapsed.

The Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority last month published their report into the failure of HBOS in 2008, blaming the lender’s management while also criticising the FCA’s predecessor, the Financial Services Authority, reports Reuters.

Andrew Tyrie MP said on Monday he asked the FRC to reconsider the need for an investigation into the auditing by KPMG of HBOS. “In the course of the investigation (into HBOS) by the regulators the FRC was invited, but turned down, the opportunity to launch an investigation into HBOS’s auditor,” Tyrie said in a statement. “That was a serious mistake. It is now essential, in the interests of public confidence that the FRC get on with this investigation and without delay.”

* * *

Climate aid pledges have Wild West accounting

After last week’s climate deal in Paris, wealthy countries have pledged billions in aid to help developing countries transition off fossil fuels - but there’s a sting in the tail.

“But what exactly are they paying for? In the wild west of climate finance, the funding includes things like a “love movie festival” research on elephant sounds and even new coal plants,” report Seth Borenstein and Karl Ritter for AP.

Developed countries are consistently misreporting the funding they’ve allocated to help developing nations. “Developed countries inflate the figure; they count everything they can find,” Romain Weikmans, a researcher at Brown University’s climate and development lab told AP. “It’s really a process of lying the more you can.”

Read the full sorry saga here.

* * *

Richard Murphy damns HMRC’s digital ambitions

HMRC has released a document this morning to outline how it plans to make tax digital. And it already has one prominent critic.

“The plan is almost as bad as I feared,” wrote Richard Murphy on his blog. “In fact, I’d go so far as to say it will become the biggest obstacle to the setting up of new small businesses in the UK that there has ever been so onerous are its obligations.”

According to Murphy, the decision to introduce it for the self-employed before companies is all backward. The delay for companies is scheduled at two years. “The sector where progress is really needed now will be the last to be addressed and there will, in the meantime, be a strong incentive to incorporate. That’s the exact reverse of what is required.”

Tags:

Replies (1)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

avatar
By redboam
14th Dec 2015 12:18

How ABout the Others?
"....investigation into KPMG over its audit of HBOS bank before it collapsed"  Why only KPMG and why only HBOS? The fact that all major banks' accounts were habitually signed of as true and fair when the opposite was the case played as significant a part in the banking crisis as did the lack of regulation.  Quite apart from balance sheets stuffed with asset backed debt obligations of such obscurity as to be almost indecipherable that were accepted without a quibble there were consistent examples of non-compliance; for example rigging foreign exchange markets.

Thanks (4)