Deloitte Fined $19.4 Million for Serious and Serial Failure in Autonomy Audit

UK based provider of audit services Deloitte LLP has been fined a whopping 15 million pounds ($19.4 million) by Britain’s accounting regulator for what The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) terms as serious and serial failures committed during the auditing of Autonomy’s financials.

Deloitte was mandated with auditing the financial statements of Autonomy for the financial years 2009 and 2010. Richard Knights and Nigel Mercer were also involved in the audit.

Tech company Hewlett Packard Inc. (HP) acquired Autonomy in 2011 at a cost of $11 billion. Unfortunately one year after the deal had been closed, HP wrote off 75% of former FTSE 100 Autonomy’s value citing that it had been deceived by financials of the company.

The regulator confirmed having reprimanded Deloitte further saying the company has agreed to provide the main problem in Autonomy’s financial analysis and its reason for the misconduct.

On the receiving end, Deloitte acknowledged the mistake which compromised its policies and general auditing standards further giving an a surety the mistake had been rectified for delivery of better services.

Our audit practices and processes have evolved significantly since this work was performed over a decade ago, and we continue to transform our audit by investing in firm-wide controls, technology and processes,” said Deloitte.

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