I think it’s pretty obvious that subsidiaries do indeed need to be audited. Whether those then need to be published separately or simply taken account of in the parent company’s own audit I’m agnostic on (essentially because I don’t really understand the issue).
But this looks decidedly odd:
Critics point out that it was a subsidiary of Northern Rock, Granite, that contained the liabilities that led to the collapse of the bank: Granite owned £49bn of mortgages that were sold by Northern Rock and moved offshore to the tax haven of Jersey.
I’m not sure that is correct. I thought Granite was fully funded by long term bonds? That it was the non-securitised part of Northern Rock that went under as the short term wholesale markets dried up?
And this looks very odd indeed:
Richard Murphy, an influential forensic accountant
Forensic accountant?
I thought Ritchie’s background was in private practice, where he built up a firm with a few hundred clients? Those clients being overwhelmingly individuals in the entertainment industry?
As to more recently, since he sold that firm, again, I’m unaware of anything forensic. He’s a political campaigner, arguing for more tax on everything on behalf of the TUC and the like….and using some very odd methods to justify it all as well.
2 responses so far ↓
1 john b // Jun 14, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Great minds, etc – and yes, you’re absolutely right about Granite.
2 Dennis The Peasant // Jun 14, 2009 at 5:55 pm
As near as I can tell, Murphy has neither formal training nor supervised experience as a forensic accountant. I would also note that much the “forensic” work done on his blog or for special interet groups such as n.e.i. is not actually forensic in nature. It is more along the lines of rudimentary analysis of publicly available data.
As Tim has often noted, the work he does that might be considered forensic in nature is almost invariably slipshod; it is riddled with errors in methodology and data use, and is usually used to draw, at best, the downright fanciful conclusions that makes Murphy the public fool he is.
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