Cantillon: Subtle clues mentioned in the Carb report

The Carb report on the 2008 audits of the covered financial institutions does not name names but it provides some examples and quotes that give the game away.

For instance, the report notes that “institution X” used commentary in its annual report to get around the way accounting rules prevented it from providing for likely future losses. Wording of the warning in the report can be Googled and up pops – Bank of Ireland.

The same doesn’t apply to notes from the audit files of “firm X” arising from its audit of “institution Y”. The firm was worried about 100 per cent loans given “in return for a significant profit share in the particular project”. Following engagement with the management, the institution’s impairment provision was increased by 121 per cent. Sounds like Nationwide? The report doesn’t say.

Overall, the report says, engagement by the firms with the institutions during the audit process led to a 28 per cent increase (€1.3 billion) in the provisions made.

The report considers whether treating the institutions as going concerns in 2008 was adequately done, and says it would have been more satisfactory if Government support was more explicitly confirmed. One firm decided to seek meetings with the Financial Regulator and the Government to obtain the necessary assurances. “This was then done and the firm relied on oral assurances obtained in forming their opinion on going concern.”

The report hints that the audit firms, working on banks’ accounts in conditions where the property market and the banking system were both in crisis, had to press for meetings with the Financial Regulator. The report says that during the course of the Carb review “it became apparent that the auditors made significant efforts to engage with the Financial Regulator which at the time did not operate an open two way channel of communication with the auditors”.

The impression created is one of audit firms trying to work with binding accountancy rules that were producing accounts most involved deemed unsatisfactory.