FT, though fearlessly blaming accountants, seems to sheepishly favor bank regulators.

Sir you write: “Unscrupulous managers, increasingly rewarded with equity incentives linked to accounting measures, have exploited the system. By writing up asset values in line with market values — whether real or estimated — they could book profits, distribute dividends, boost share prices and make incentive payments. Consider investment bankers’ bonuses, distributed ahead of the 2008 financial crisis but based on asset values that tumbled only months later.” “Reform accounting rules to restore trust in audit” August 3.

I agree, quite often accounting is a tool used for not quite ethical behavior. But, when you refer to the investment bankers’ bonuses, you are sure pointing in the wrong direction.

I dare you dare to go back and look at how these investment (and European) banks, before the 2008 crisis, were leveraged with assets perceived (mortgages), decreed (sovereigns) or concocted (AAA rated securities) as safe. Do you think that if they had been required to hold as much capital against these assets, as they needed to hold against assets perceived as “risky”, like loans to entrepreneurs, there would have been room available for all those bonuses? No way Jose!

And you do seem to suggest somehow that the accountants, before that crisis, should have considered the possibility of asset values tumbling only months later. Sir, the explosion, and its real causes, is much more important than the how it is accounted. If accounting is to become even more predictive then we are surely feeding even more worms into that open can of undue behavior.

When we have regulators who believe that what is perceived as risky is more dangerous to our bank systems than what is perceived as safe, I assure you that much more important than reforming any accounting rules, is reforming bank regulation rules. 

Sir, whenever, for whatever great sounding reason, it is argued that banks should not be required to hold more capital, you can be sure there are some neo-bankers thinking about their bonuses behind it.

PS. Neo-bankers? Yes because that is not the bankers I remember. Then they were savvy loan officers, now they are just equity minimizing financial engineers. I am sorry for feeling quite nostalgic.

PS. Most of the bonuses that are currently paid out to bankers, are still firmly rooted in the low capital requirements against what is perceived, decreed or concocted as safe.

@PerKurowski

With respect to the Big Four, it is all déjà vu

Sir, I refer to Brooke Master’s “A clubby oligopoly that is overdue for reform” of August 20 and to your editorial “Accountancy’s Big Four need more competition” August 25.

“The Big Four accounting firms became big by marketing the value of their size. Now they want to have their cake and eat it too, asking to be sheltered from ruinous lawsuits. If accountability is to mean anything in accounting, we cannot afford to turn the concept of professional responsibility into a risk model of affordability.

Individual professionals and small firms lay their names on the line, day after day. If the Big Four cannot handle it, they had better let go. Then we might all be better off. At least the systemic risks will be smaller.”

Sir and that is a letter I wrote and that you published in May 2004, 12 years ago, before I became a pariah to FT.

And years earlier, in 1997, in an Op-Ed in Venezuela I had analyzed much of that issue though from a slightly more local angle. It is amazing to see how serious problems are identified, and then nothing is done to solve these, and they come back to haunt us over and over again.

PS. Brooke Master writes in her piece that a disgruntled PwC trainee described PwC as a “meat grinder” and moaned about how boring the job” Does that not sound like accounting could become ready for the use of robots?

@PerKurowski ©

FT, why should bank regulators have the right to game the capital requirements with their credit risk weights?

Sir you write: “bad accounting practices can contribute to financial instability. Booms flatter their measured profitability, which encourages them to take more assets on to their balance sheets. Thus leverage begets more leverage throughout the banking system, until asset prices can rise no longer and the whole edifice comes crashing down.” “Banks should not be able to game accounting rules”, September 3.

Of course you are absolutely right we need the good accounting practices, but, frankly, don’t you think that no matter how bad the accounting, it could never have caused the kind of bank leverages that the regulators allowed for with their credit-risk weighted capital requirements. For example what about the over 60 to 1 leverages authorized in Basel II for bank exposures to AAA rated securities or to sovereigns rated like Greece was until November 2009? What about that infinite leverage authorized by Basel I in 1988 when regulators decreed the risk weights for OECD sovereign to be ZERO percent? If that is not gaming what is?

Sir, why do you insist in covering up for the fundamental mistake of the Base Committee; or when will anyone in FT dare to explain why these regulations do not dangerously distort the allocation of bank credit to the real economy?

And you also write: “Bankers complain that a tougher regime might force them to realise more losses in the short term. Tough.”… Yes, tough on banks… but, because of banks then having less capital, and the risk weighted capital requirements, it would also be tough on all those borrowers who would have even less access to bank credit… something which would also be tough for many unemployed.

@PerKurowski

Can accounting really be allowed to base itself on known fictions?

Sir it is with amazement I read Barney Jopson, Benedict Mander and Miles Johnson reporting on how “Venezuela devaluation dents big companies”, February 12.

I understand the locals are prohibited from even thinking in terms of a different foreign exchange rate than what the current oilygarchs in power allows them to, though even so, most of them do, at least in the shadows.

But that grown-up foreign companies hang on to a rate that drives only a part of the economy, and have not created reserves to cover for this and other adjustments of the fx fiction to come, is astonishing. It sort of falls in the same category of naiveté as bank regulators believing that an AAA to AA rating has so little implicit risk so that they can allow banks to leverage over 60 times to 1 on such exposures.

Honestly, something is terribly wrong if auditors can ok balance sheets based on a known Bs. fiction.

Big Responsibilities

Published in FT May 29, 2004

Sir, The Big Four accounting firms became that big by marketing the value of their size. Now they want to have their cake and eat it too, asking to be sheltered from ruinous lawsuits. If accountability is to mean anything in accounting, we cannot afford to turn the concept of professional responsibility into a risk model of affordability.

Individual professionals and small firms lay their names on the line, day after day. If the Big Four cannot handle it, they had better let go. Then we might all be better off. At least the systemic risks will be smaller.