Financial Failures and Scandals

This concise volume evaluates the cause and significance of recent corporate failures and financial scandals, and how they reflect on the fitness for purpose of the external auditors, financial reports, financial watchdogs, boards, directors and senior management. Failures like the disastrous collapse of Carillion, examined at length, have ultimately led to a crisis of confidence not only in the audit process but in the entire process of financial reporting.

Revealing the shortcomings in audit quality, independence, choice and the growing expectation gap, Financial Failures and Scandals questions if the profession, its regulators or government watchdogs, are adequately prepared for the challenges of increasing regulation, public outcry and political scrutiny in the face of inevitable future financial failures. The fundamental structures of financial reporting, annual reports, boards of directors and senior management are often found to have failed. Tighter regulation and new requirements for reporting will inevitably result.

Drawing on extensive research and interviews with insiders, users and experts, this unique book provides a compelling account of the profoundly disruptive impact of financial failures on corporate and financial accountability. Topical and readable, this book will be of great interest to students, researchers and professionals in accounting and auditing, as well as to policy makers and regulators.

Krish Bhaskar was founding Professor of Accounting at the University of East Anglia, UK and previously held positions at the London School of Economics and the University of Bristol. He is the author of over 50 books and has also worked extensively in the IT, consulting, investment banking, automotive and forecasting sectors.

John Flower, now retired, was formerly Professor of Accounting at the University of Bristol, UK and Director of the Centre for Research in European Accounting, Brussels.

Rod Sellers OBE, FCA, has spent almost 50 years in senior financial and corporate roles in industry.