Taking Stock: No humble pie after anti-PwC newspaper ad

TAKING STOCK must apologise. It’s been so busy, what with picking the winners of the British Accountancy Awards and other even more important stuff.

So we’ve only just noticed the, how shall we put it, enigmatic, advert in the Telegraph on Saturday. On page 33 you’ll notice a pie. Yes, a pie. Underneath said pie is some text relating to the US regulator giving PwC’s consultants in the States a fair bit of stick – regarding a $25m fine and its ban from some consulting work.

“No-one at PwC US reprimanded or even told Director that his comments were innapropriate because they drew the firm’s objectivity seriously into question,” the ad says cryptically.

It concludes with “Friends of PwC Gibraltar”, and notes that the ad is from Arron Banks.

A 27-second search of the interweb suggests that Banks is an insurance company director and investor who’s done very well for himself. He has apparently described himself as a “bored multi-millionaire – who bought millions of pounds of shares in Iofina in April, reported This is Money.

So what’s the PwC link? And Gibraltar?

Well, Arron hasn’t got back to TS on this, unfortunately. A PwC spokesman in the UK said that “the purpose of the advert was unclear”.

Bearing in mind the Insurance Times wrote a couple of months ago about Southern Rock, of which Banks is chief, suing the Gibralatrian Financial Services Commission because it was put under undue pressure from PwC when commissioning a report…TS thinks it’s probably something to do with that.

And the pie? Well TS thinks it means either PwC has a big slice of the pie, or it’s been telling porkie pies. That’s the best we can do folks.

Flickr image rights: Sunchild57