I could present it to you in another way where I said, ”You have to keep in mind that while they might
People don’t act on —
ANTLE: I think you have to ask seriously how well-grounded in fact they are. I’m not saying sweep them under the rug but how well grounded in fact are these alleged perception problems.
ANTLE: I don’t think irrelevant in the sense that you would presume, as your questions have, that theremust be something underlying some of these. So you should definitely explore it.
But we know lots of cases where perceptions have been vastly wrong, the world is flat, that sort of thing.
COMMISSIONER UNGER: But underlying the discussion is the fact that the federal securities laws give accountants a franchise, because all of our statements, all the statements that must be filed with the Commission most of them have to have audited financial statements.
ANTLE: I agree with that entirely. The franchise that’s given and that it’s the Commission’s responsibility to maintain and protect I think should be an important element in the consideration of these matters.
And that’s why also I think that you’re entirely right in delving into these matters and going into these matters, exploring them as deeply as possible and having whatever dialogue and study needs to be done to clarify them, because that franchise is a valuable thing that our government and my government has given these firms, and ithas responsibilities.
COMMISSIONER UNGER: Who performed these consulting services before the accounting firms? Is this a new demand for this type of service, and now it’s being met by the firms, or is this a shift in business from some other part of the economy to the accounting firms?
ANTLE: Well, there are probably people better qualified than I, but I think there’s a lot of growth in services that they and others have innovated, which is why, in part of my remarks, I wanted to underscore the fact that I believe they’ve been the incubators of a lot of valuable services. Fortsätt läsa I think the ones that we hear mostly my intuition is that they’re largely irrelevant