The accounting watchdog has ordered Ernst & Young to explain its role in how Lehman Brothers hid $50bn of debts, but the regulator has a conflict. It is trying to increase the choice of audit firms so cannot do anything that reduces the current Big Four to just three.
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Top of the in-tray for Lady Hogg, the new chairman of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), should be how to increase auditor choice. Four big accounting firms is not enough, even if another one does not disappear.
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Does it matter if the public holds politicians in low esteem? Business has been in the same doghouse and survived, emerging cleaner and fitter.
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If you say loud enough that a company is going bust it very likely will. Should commentators thus show restraint?
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