KPMG audit shame Trainee

MA for PM?

Liz Truss (Mary Elizabeth Truss) could become the first management accountant to hold the post of UK Prime Minster.

A YouGov poll shows Truss has a 62% to 38% lead over Rishi Sunak in the race to become Conservative Party leader, with the winner being announced on 5 September after a vote by the party members.

A former Liberal Democrat, the Oxford graduate joined Shell in 1996 on their accountancy graduate scheme and qualified as a CIMA, before joining Cable & Wireless. During her five years at Cable & Wireless she rose to economic director. She then became the full-time deputy director of Reform in January 2008.

Her father was a professor of pure maths at Leeds University and her mother was a nurse. Truss has described them as both “to the left of Labour”. She is married to fellow accountant Hugh O’Leary.

Truss, the former foreign secretary, has said she will treat households as ‘single tax entities’, and has outlined tax cuts of over £30 billion. She told the BBC that “reducing National Insurance and Corporation Tax increases the supply side of the economy”.

PQ auditor spared big sanction

The former KPMG PQ who worked on the Carillion audit has escaped with just a severe reprimand over his ‘misconduct’. While Pratik Paw admitted creating false meeting minutes to mislead an Audit Quality Review inspection, he was not found to have acted dishonestly.

Paw was told he was looking at a fine of £50,000 and a ban, which would have forced him to sell his house. Instead, the FRC independent tribunal issued no fine and just the reprimand to the 25 year old.

Paw’s lawyers had told the tribunal that Paw deeply regretted not questioning the orders of his superiors and had learnt a great deal from his conduct at the time.

Meanwhile, the lead partner on Carillion, Peter Meehan, was hit with a £250,000 fine.

KPMG was also issued with a record fine of £14.4 million, reduced from £20 million because the Big 4 firm had co-operated. For more information go to page 28.

Sangster wins prestigious international award

Professor Alan Sangster, chair in accounting history at the University of Aberdeen Business School, has won the 2022 Outstanding Accounting Educator Award of the American Accounting Association.

Sangster is the first Europeanbased winner of this 50-year-old prestigious international award.

He is currently the editor-inchief of Accounting Education and many accountancy students would have read one of his eight textbooks.

On hearing he had received the award, he said: “It is a great honour to receive this, the highest award available to accounting academics from a jury of my peers, supported by past and present colleagues, and past students from across the world. I am very grateful to the American Accounting Association and to the PwC Foundation for their generosity and support.”