#305: Auditing, it's complicated

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Simon Shares

• Libstar listing is proceeding and I am not taking part. I do think the market will love it but Google the private equity sellers (Abraaj) lots bad happening their and the company has declared a R800million pre listing dividend - while raising R1.5billion?
• Consol has pulled their JSE listing citing "challenging market conditions". Have the market conditions really changed that much in the last few weeks or was the market just not excited by the listing?

Auditing - it's complicated

The local auditing profession is having a tough time of it with the Auditor General (Thembekile Makwetu) commenting on The Money Show with Bruce Whitfield he said that that the professions reputation was "in the gutter".

I wanted to understand what we as investor really can expect from an auditor? Are they to blame for Steinhoff (JSE code: SNH) and other recent collapses or is that beyond their scope?

Keith McLachlan, fund manager at Alpha Wealth, studied as an auditor and is now a fund manager so decided to have a short chat with him to get some perspective. The short chat ended up being a long chat and I suspect we missed a number of angles but one thing did stand out for me, the word "material".

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