WHEREAS auditor independence of Company management helps guarantee the integrity of financial statements;
WHEREAS auditor selection by Company management may compromise auditor independence of Company management;
THEREFORE Fleetwood shareowners request the Board of Directors to have the auditor selected annually by shareowner vote. To insulate auditor selection from influence by Company management, any qualified auditing firm could put itself on the ballot. Shareowners request the Board to take all necessary steps to enact this resolution in time to hold the first such vote at the year-2003 shareowner meeting.
Supporting Statement:
Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2002:
"The accounting industry is in urgent need of reform.
The Enron fiasco is only the latest in a string of episodes involving Big 5 accounting firms in which outside auditors repeatedly blessed questionable financial maneuvers -- until companies’ fortunes collapsed under mountains of previously undisclosed debt and phony profits."
The Economist, October 28, 2000:
"There is plenty of evidence that financial statements often fail to come up to scratch. The number of companies restating their accounts—never in ways that make them appear healthier—has been rising so fast as to have become almost commonplace. Well-known firms whose audited profits shrunk in a restatement include Waste Management, Sunbeam and CUC International, during its merger with Cendant. Investors have lost billions of dollars, and much of their faith in auditors."
In the current system, management chooses the auditor, and shareowners merely rubber-stamp that choice. Under this proposal however, shareowners would choose (by vote) among several auditing firms competing for the position. This would encourage auditors to build their reputations in the eyes of investors rather than in the eyes of management, creating new pressure for higher standards. Investors could decide how important auditor independence is to them, and how it should be assessed.
The average investor may seem ill-equipped to make such assessments on her own. But she would not make them on her own. She would benefit from consensus-building discussion by the entire investment community, including proxy advisory firms. It is much easier to assess reputations of auditors than of board members, because there are only a handful of auditing firms, versus hundreds of board candidates for a diversified portfolio of stocks over the years.
As with other voting matters, management would presumably make a recommendation on which auditor to choose. Even if the management-recommended auditor is never voted out, a rising percentage of opposition votes would provide a healthy early warning to the auditor, that its reputation is slipping and corrective action is required.
This is not to imply that there are accounting biases at Fleetwood in particular, but no one knows when and where problems may occur. This proposal would create a competitive market for auditor reputation. Investors would gain the power and flexibility to determine standards of auditing services that best meet their needs.
Further information on this proposal is on the worldwide web at http://www.corpmon.com .