Lynn Turner, Senior Advisor at Hemming Morse and a former Chief Accountant of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, was quoted in a Wall Street Journal Article, “String of Firms That Imploded Have Something in Common: Ernst & Young Audited Them.” The article described financial failures and accounting issues at Wirecard AG, Luckin Coffee, NMC Health PLC, and WeWork, noting that Ernst & Young was the auditor of all of these companies.

Mr. Turner was interviewed for the article and explained Ernst & Young’s history of developing relationships with venture-capital firms that fund start-ups and technology companies, pricing its financial statement audits “exceedingly competitively low to attract these companies with the hope that when they go public, the will make up for the initial discounts of audit fees.”

The article cited examples of the success of Ernst & Young’s approach, as the auditor of Google parent company Alphabet, as well as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Netflix.

The article can be found here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/string-of-firms-that-imploded-have-something-in-common-ernst-young-audited-them-11602863319