Deloitte Squeezed by SEC, Chinese Regulators (No Sarbanes for China Company...)

Forbes ^ | 9/10/2011 @ 9:09PM | William Pentland

[dila813]

The global accounting powerhouse, Deloitte, is sitting between a bullet and a target in a global battle over the future of free enterprise.

In May, Deloitte China received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission demanding records related to possible accounting fraud at the Hong Kong-based Chinese financial software company, Longtop Financial Technologies.

[dila813]

Looks like no SEC Regulation will abided by Chinese companies.

Will Obama be cowed? or will he have them all delisted as the law requires?

This is going to be interesting

[AntiScumbag]

Will Obama be cowed?

Jug-ears has absolutely nothing to do with it, it's a question of whether a non-US subsidiary located in China is subject to a US subpoena and whether China can prevent them from complying.

or will he have them all delisted as the law requires?

1) Jug-ears has never been and never will be responsible for delisting anything, the listing exchange (NYSE, NASDAQ, etc.) is.

2) NO law requires it, it's strictly up to the exchange.

3) Delisting has already happened.

Now, if the Chinese want to be intransigent, they will just guarantee that it will be harder to raise capital in the US.

If that's what they want to do, so be it.

However, it seems that you're not very big on reading, but love to jump to totally unjustified and goofy conclusions based on no facts whatsoever.

Seems to happen a lot around here.

[wiggen]

I don’t see how any large accounting firm will give a thumbs up to any Chinese company in the forseeable future which means they won’t be able to IPO here.

[p. henry]

An appropriate response from the SEC would be to require the American exchanges to amend their initial and ongoing listing requirements to provide that listed companies employ auditors not subject to the Chinese regulations that are now preventing Deloitte China's compliance with the SEC subpoena. It's really pretty simply. If Chinese companies want access to our capital markets, they play by our rules.

It would also be interesting to review how the Chinese companies that registered public securities offerings in the United States in recent years have performed relative to their benchmarks. I have not seen any such study but have heard that it is not a pretty picture.

[AntiScumbag]

Perhaps. But, then again, perhaps not.

Deloitte has been put in a very bad position by the Chinese. But, it’s a specific issue with one company. Whether it has more far-reaching effects remains to be seen.

[AntiScumbag]

An appropriate response from the SEC would be to require the American exchanges to amend their initial and ongoing listing requirements to provide that listed companies employ auditors not subject to the Chinese regulations that are now preventing Deloitte China's compliance with the SEC subpoena.

I don't have any problem with that. It might mean that Chinese companies would have a very tough time raising any capital here.

Oh, well.

Now, our idiot friend jug-ears would probably have a very large problem with that whole concept.

[p. henry]

I suspect the European bourses would follow suit. The Chinese rules would probably change very quickly.