251–260 of 280 posts
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It's fraud when you tell investors incorrect things in prospectuses, for example. These things are required to be signed off by auditors to participate in us stock exchanges
What specific statements were incorrect in the Evergrande prospectus?
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If I squint, I can understand the value of a non-audit-audit in some circumstances. But I don't understand the value of it in this circumstance, except for the value in obscuring one's finances behind a "serious" auditor's letterhead. Put another way: the context is anxious investors. Is this intended to assuage them, or is it intended to dupe them?
Not necessarily. It might simply be because they wanted to publish something now and not in a couple of months.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-justice-dept-is-split-... WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Splits between U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors are delaying the conclusion of a long-running criminal investigation into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, four people familiar with the matter have told Reuters. The investigation began in 2018 and is focused on Binance's compliance with U.S. anti-mo…
Oh dear - house of cards.
One thing to be aware of with Binance. As far as I understand, most of the transactions occur on their own ethereum-compatible-but-not-quite-ethereum chain called the "Binance Smart Chain". While having these sidechains can improve scalability and reduce costs (they are just another form of sharding), this presumably introduces an additional point of potential failure compared with regular centralised exchanges: not…
How is this kind of sidechain any better than just having your transactions recorded in a boring old private SQL database? The Axie Infinity hack suggests that these private chains are the worst of all worlds: they're effectively controlled by a single entity, but also far more susceptible to hacks than a well-understood traditional database. The blockchain part seems to be a pure marketing decoy that's worse than us…
Surprising that this is not the front page. FTX related news are still front page but this is in the obscurity. Any of these two YC funded?
Binance is the closest thing to a global, borderless bank that exists today. They exist everywhere and nowhere. Their legal entities shift based on what is needed at the moment. They have the ability to easily create tens of millions of dollars as needed based on their BNB reserves, tight relationship with Tether, their ability to launch new token projects (i.e. unregulated securities offerings), and their stablecoin…
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-justice-dept-is-split-... WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Splits between U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors are delaying the conclusion of a long-running criminal investigation into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, four people familiar with the matter have told Reuters. The investigation began in 2018 and is focused on Binance's compliance with U.S. anti-mo…
Now do SBF.
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Isn’t it telling that this work wasn’t done by the “big four?” Given that the Big Four like money and are ostensibly the biggest and oldest and with the best reputation. Any perceived shaky but actually strong firm would come out gangbusters with “Old Accounting firm stakes its reputation that we aren’t full of shit.” After the death/execution/seppuku of Anderson after Enron, the remaining four seem extra conservativ…
Mazars isn’t a fly by night operation. They are old and big, just not in the big 4. Traditional finance views Mazars audits (which this isn’t) the same as a big 4 audit.
My point stands that if you want to assuage doubts, you don’t hire the #11 [0] (or #21 if just looking at US revenue [1]) firm to do it. This would be simple to get PWC or someone. But a firm that big isn’t willing to touch this kind of operation.
[0] https://big4accountingfirms.org/the-top-accounting-firms-in-... [1] https://www.accountingtoday.com/the-2021-top-100-firms-data
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Isn’t it telling that this work wasn’t done by the “big four?” Given that the Big Four like money and are ostensibly the biggest and oldest and with the best reputation. Any perceived shaky but actually strong firm would come out gangbusters with “Old Accounting firm stakes its reputation that we aren’t full of shit.” After the death/execution/seppuku of Anderson after Enron, the remaining four seem extra conservativ…
Mazars is 5th in Europe, 24 400 employees and it makes ~2 bilions in turnover. this above comment is not bringing much value to the discussion I think.
They aren’t a tiny firm, but they aren’t even in the same league as the big companies. Mazars has $2B in revenue and the smallest of the big4, KPMG, has $32B.
They aren’t competitors and Mazars doesn’t even compete for work.
Here’s a list of all major US banks and their auditors [0]. Mazars doesn’t audit a single one and 90% are big4.
In my comment, I wanted to point out that Binance is not doing what a reputable financial firm would do, hire a major accounting firm and have them audit. Hiring a regional firm means they likely went down the list until they finally found an auditor willing to make any statement.
It looks silly to anyone who understands auditing.
My point was also that major audit firms risk dissolution if they are convicted like Anderson was. So there’s no way that a firm is going to risk their $30B+ audit book in exchange for a few million in fees.
Mazars doesn’t have as big a book to risk. And their customers aren’t major exchange listed firms that would have to fire them if they were convicted of fraud.
[0] https://ibanknet.com/scripts/callreports/filist.aspx?type=au...
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Mazars is 5th in Europe, 24 400 employees and it makes ~2 bilions in turnover. this above comment is not bringing much value to the discussion I think.
They aren’t top 10 globally or even in the US. They aren’t a tiny firm, but they aren’t even in the same league as the big companies. Mazars has $2B in revenue and the smallest of the big4, KPMG, has $32B. They aren’t competitors and Mazars doesn’t even compete for work. Here’s a list of all major US banks and their auditors [0]. Mazars doesn’t audit a single one and 90% are big4. In my comment, I wanted to point out…