Tommy Tainant
Diamond Member
Trump Media’s first auditor quit months after being appointed
Accountancy firm did not want to be associated with former US president’s social media venture
www.ft.com
The disaster unfolding around Trump media takes another turn as it i revealed that the initial auditors quit after a few monthe. In my experience auditors quit usually because the auditor cant pay OR they hav sone ethixs and dont want to get knee deep in a dodgy enterprise.
As you would expect Trump then went downmarket looking for more pliale partners. His new ausitors BF Borger have a string of negative strikes against them.
BF Borgers has targeted small- and microcap companies unwilling or unable to engage larger, more expensive firms, and has built the eighth-largest client list of any US audit firm despite having a staff of only 10 certified public accountants. Regulators have warned that it has taken on work faster than it can manage.
The FT reported earlier this month that the firm has one of the worst inspection records among the hundreds of audit firms overseen by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the US. It has also been barred from taking on new clients in Canada for failing to meet professional standards in public company audits there, and founder Ben Borgers has been censured in Colorado over the poor quality of audits of some retirement plans.
Its hardy a ringing endorsseent but there is worse to come.
In a previously unreported development, BF Borgers has also been thrown out of the accounting profession’s own inspection programme in the US, a peer review system run by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Reviewers found multiple instances of the firm failing to meet professional standards in its audit work.
“The firm was found to be so seriously deficient in its performance that education and remedial, corrective actions are not adequate,” the AICPA concluded in November.
Maybe this is the sort of info that should be included in the initial offer document ? Certainly I would like to know about it before investing.
I think disgruntled investors might want to sue truth social for withokding key information.
Why would trump want to engage shoddy auditors ? It would be cynical to suggest that it suits him.