No one loves auditors. They are the elephant men of business. Companies treat them as freak shows that must be tolerated while shareholders consider them to be nitpickers and party poopers. Why, even auditors themselves view their audit services as an albatross hung around their necks.
Indeed, if the Big Four audit firms—Deloitte & Touche, EY, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)—all of whom do business in India through their affiliates, had their way, they would probably drop audit services from their portfolios altogether. It may have been the reason why most of them came into being in the first place but …
Sundeep Khanna has, in a career spanning three decades, donned multiple hats across corporate and editorial roles, and is one of the foremost chroniclers of business in India. In his last assignment, he was executive editor of the financial daily Mint; for The Morning Context, he will write on corporate governance in India every fortnight in his newsletter, Friction.
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