Big Four

Top officials of Japanese corporation Olympus, which makes cameras and medical supplies, admitted that the company had been using acquisitions to hide decades of losses that date back to the 1990s, according to NPR, with president Shuichi Takayama, who took over in late October, saying in a statement that the company had “conducted extremely improper accounting.”

Japanese Camera and medical equipment firm Olympus could face disciplinary action from the Tokyo stock exchange, according to Reuters.

Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Ernst and Young, collectively known as the Big Four firms, may be forced by the European Union to break up into smaller companies, leaving them vulnerable to future takeovers, according to Reuters.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) announced on Aug. 1 that it has come to a settlement agreement regarding a disciplinary matter involving a former Ernst and Young partner and manager, whom the PCAOB said provided misleading documents and information to PCAOB inspectors and altered working papers.

India-based Satyam Computer Services Ltd. and its former auditors -- all Indian affiliates of the U.S. auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) -- settled with U.S. regulators on Tuesday for a combined $17.5 million to resolve the probe into what became known as “India’s Enron,” reported Reuters.

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More than two years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street Journal reports that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo yesterday filed a lawsuit against Ernst & Young (E&Y) for civil fraud.

Ernst & Young announced that it will appoint four non-executive directors to its global advisory board after the summer. It will be the first time an accounting firm will have a board structure similar to those governing multinational companies.

Victims of disgraced financier Bernie Madoff’s multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme are suing the U.K. branch of Big 4 accounting firm KPMG, alleging that auditors for the jailed billionaire’s financial operations failed to notice or ignored ample evidence of financial misconduct, making them, according to the complaint, the “primary players responsible for the fraud.”

Companies saw only a slight increase in audit fees in 2008 compared with the previous year, according to an annual survey from Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF), the research affiliate of Financial Executives International.

Less than a day after confirming to numerous media outlets -- including WCBS TV, which broke the story -- that one of its New York City employees had been diagnosed with swine flu, Big Four firm Ernst & Young today withdrew that confirmation.

The Indian government has superseded the board of Satyam Computer Services, the outsourcing giant that announced this week that its chairman had concealed $1 billion in losses.  It will appoint 10 nominee-directors, who will meet within a week and make a decision on a new management team for the company, whose name means "truth" or "this is true" in Sanskrit.

The Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is now under fire for signing off on Satyam's financial statements for several years. In a statement sent by email, the auditing firm defended itself: "The audits were conducted by Pricewaterhouse in accordance with applicable auditing standards and were supported by appropriate audit evidence."

A federal jury on Wednesday found Robert Pfaff and John Larson, two former employees at the accounting firm KPMG, and a former top tax lawyer, Raymond J. Ruble, guilty in a tax-shelter trial once billed as the largest ever. A third former KPMG partner, David Greenberg, was acquitted of the charges, the New York Times reported.