|  | | 2004 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
GREEN EYESHADES NEVER LOOKED SO SEXY: AUDITORS CAN WRITE THEIR OWN TICKET IN THESE POST-ENRON DAYS
Staff Writer
Businessweek Online. December 29, 2004
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EXCERPT: Three years after accounting scandals roiled Enron, audit firms are still regularly making headlines for all the wrong reasons. In the past week alone, kpmg was dismissed from its audit duties at troubled mortgage company Fannie Mae, while Ernst & Young agreed to pay a $125 million fine arising from its role in auditing Superior Bank, a failed Illinois thrift. kpmg says its work for Fannie was "grounded in the principles" of proper accounting, while e&y maintains it is not liable for Superior's problems. Yet there has never been a better time to be an auditor. Thanks to congressional demands for more extensive probes, companies and their outside auditors are adding accountants at a record pace. Even the federal government, from the Securities & Exchange Commission to the FBI, is hiring. "We have 1,200 more people today than a year ago, and if we could have another 1,000 people tomorrow, we'd take them," says Allen Thomas, national managing director for human resources for Deloitte & Touche. "SELLERS' MARKET." The crunch stems largely from auditing reforms passed by Congress in the wake of Enron and other scandals. Those changes have increased the number of hours it takes to do a typical audit by 40% to 60%. Yet even as demand has spiked, the supply of auditors is down. In the 1990s, numbers-savvy students bypassed accounting degrees in favor of finance and technology programs. By 2001 the number of students earning accounting degrees had dropped below 45,000, from more than 60,000 graduates 10 years earlier. That has created a "sellers' market" for talent, says Greg Garrison, head of audit and assurance for PricewaterhouseCoopers. |
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