Category: Malignant Culture


Yaniv Blumenfeld: "My work is done here."

Yaniv Blumenfeld: "My work is done here."

The Onion, Wire Services

NEW YORK—As a volatile market reacts to news of the Bear Stearns fire-sale deal with a surge in stock prices but reduced bond yield, officers from JPMorgan Chase announced Monday that they were close to finalizing plans to purchase Bear Stearns in an incredibly complex series of financial maneuvers and obscure legal jargon that can only be described in the most mind-numbingly dense and unreadable way. Successfully adding yet another infuriating block of text to an already indecipherable paragraph, some investors said they hoped to stave off bankruptcy for Bear Stearns, which, during last year’s impossible-to-write-about mortgage crisis, saw its value depreciate almost as quickly as readers’ interest in this story. “Critics on the equity side have no economic standing because the deal valuation is based on intrinsic pricing models,” said analyst Jack Pinard, only further bogging down the news for anyone who might be remotely interested in grasping what the fuck is going on. While speculation spread on Wall Street that shareholders might angle to boost the selling price beyond JP Morgan’s very low but federally guaranteed bid, others claimed to be absolutely amazed that you even made it to the end of this sentence. Commenting on his employer’s financial deterioration, Yaniv Blumenfeld said, “My work is done here.”

Yaniv Blumenfeld: "My work is done here." (L&H's 919 Third Avenue New York Headquarters)

Yaniv Blumenfeld: "My work is done here." (Laventhol's 919 Third Avenue New York Headquarters)

By Fredric J. Kessler

I read with interest the article “The comeback of consulting” (The Corporation, Sept. 3). Based on my 12 years’ experience as a consultant, consulting manager, and practice leader with three of the larger firms, I could not help but laugh myself silly from this piece.

At the three firms I worked for, we had all or most of these so-called ethics-ensuring processes in place. They became a rich vein of humor, and the partners responsible for presenting and administrating these processes did so with many winks of the eye.

The malignant culture and bizarre values of the audit side, which spill over and infect the consulting side of the house, lead directly to situations like Enron. Many audit partners will dishonor themselves and go to almost any extreme to keep the client and the stream of fees being generated. Many audit partners will pressure the consultants to change a report to ensure that the audit client does not end the audit relationship based on the bad news that is rightly in the report. I have seen this behavior up close, including the crash and burn of Laventhol & Horwath and the associated conflicts which fly in the face of every ethical precept to which this group of so-called professionals subscribes.

Since the power of greed in human nature is as constant as the speed of light, I am sure nothing has changed since my time with the public accounting firms, irrespective of the good news preached by Deloitte & Touche USACEO Barry Salzberg, which, of course, he wants us all to believe. As long as auditors and consultants are tied together in the same firm, nothing will change.

More here and here.