This week was not a good one for Gordon Brown as fears grew over the state of public finances, while Leicester City football club appointed Deloitte & Touche as administrators and it emerged that more than half the FTSE-100 could fall foul of Sarbanes-Oxley.
On Monday it was revealed that struggling tour operator MyTravel was unlikely to restate accounts’‘ for previous years as a financial and commercial review of its operations continued, while Ernst & Young’s ITEM club warned of a £7bn shortfall in public sector finances and a good chance of further tax rises as a result.
Tuesday saw cash-strapped football club Leicester city move to appoint Deloitte & Touche as administrator, something which was confirmed later in the week. Also on the same day, it became known that James Strachan, the partner of Labour minister Baroness Blackstone, had been recommended as the next chairman of local government watchdog, the Audit Commission.
On Wednesday Accountancy Age reported that more than half the FTSE-100 risks falling foul of the controversial Sarbanes-Oxley Act because they do not produce their accounts quickly enough at the end of the financial year.
And there was bad news for PwC in the US, as it facing a reported $100m lawsuit over audit work it carried out for San Jose-based HPL Technologies.
The headline story on Thursday was that UK businesses will see £5bn wiped from their bottom lines as a result of a radical new accounting standard that forces companies to book stock options as an expense.
A quarter of FDs polled in the Accountancy Age/ Reed Accountancy Personnel Big Question said an accountancy qualification was not necessary to do their jobs.
Friday, the week ended with the chancellor hit with more dire predictions as the National Institute of Economic and Social Research claimed that taxes would have to be raised by the equivalent of 5p on income tax if a £20bn hole in public finance coffers was to be avoided.