Lax oversight allowed ex-regulators to jump to firms they oversaw

[nitpicker]

https://nypost.com/2018/01/23/lax-oversight-allowed-ex-regulators-to-jump-to-firms-they-oversaw/

Lax oversight allowed ex-regulators to jump to firms they oversaw

By Kevin Dugan

January 23, 2018

Each of the Big Four accounting firms has hired former regulators — and the accountants have jumped immediately into high-level positions the regulator oversees, The Post has learned. The accountants were able to make the jump into lucrative private-sector jobs because the watchdog, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, until last summer had no rule against such moves, according to a spokeswoman for the regulator.

Other regulators, like the Federal Reserve, have long-standing rules barring employees from immediately jumping to companies they oversaw. The lax oversight rules at the PCAOB came to light on Monday when a federal grand jury in Manhattan indicted five persons — four execs at KPMG and a fifth who had applied for a job at the accounting giant.
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The “Big Four” accountants — which also include Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte — each employ high-level execs hired the same month they left the PCAOB, according to a review of dozens of LinkedIn accounts.
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For instance:
•A Deloitte partner in global regulatory and public policy was a former associate chief auditor at the PCAOB, and later became a special adviser to one of the watchdog’s board members up until the month she left.
•A PwC director in accounting and capital markets joined in October 2014, the same month she left her PCAOB inspections specialist job.
•An E&Y executive director who oversees inspections for the Northeast region, had been the watchdog’s associate director of inspections for 10 years until he joined E&Y in December 2014.

“It’s really a credibility issue, it transcends the alleged crime itself,” Mitchell Littman, a professor at Brooklyn Law School and securities lawyer, told The Post.
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