Ahold auditors stand by work
Deloitte & Touche, the auditor of Ahold, stands by its work carried out at the Dutch supermarket giant after a $500m (£317m) overstatement error was revealed yesterday.
Link: Dutch supermarket admits £317m error
Last night, the firm insisted it had done its job properly. This was backed up by an admission made by Ahold, which read: ‘The decision to proportionally consolidate was made on the basis of information that had not previously been made available to the company’s auditors.’
Furthermore, analysts claimed that problems with booking vendor allowances – believed to stem from its distribution service, US Food Service – had been detected by Deloitte, a report in the FT said today.
Deloitte said financial irregularities had been alerted to management.
Yesterday, following the reported overstatement, Ahold’s audit committee has appointed independent forensic accountants to investigate the matter and certain senior executives of the US Foodservice purchasing and marketing management team have been suspended.
Deloitte has audited Ahold for more than 15 years.