PCAOB Letter
Inspection of D’Arcangelo & Co., LLP
Issued by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
September 4, 2008
- Notes Concerning this Report
Portions of this report may describe deficiencies or potential
deficiencies in the systems, policies, procedures, practices,
or conduct of the firm that is the subject of this report. The
express inclusion of certain deficiencies and potential deficiencies,
however, should not be construed to support any negative inference
that any other aspect of the firm's systems, policies, procedures,
practices, or conduct is approved or condoned by the Board or
judged by the Board to comply with laws, rules, and professional
standards.
- Any references in this report to violations or potential violations
of law, rules, or professional standards should be understood
in the supervisory context in which this report was prepared.
Any such references are not a result of an adversarial adjudicative
process and do not constitute conclusive findings of fact or of
violations for purposes of imposing legal liability. Similarly,
any description herein of a firm's cooperation in addressing issues
constructively should not be construed, and is not construed by
the Board, as an admission, for purposes of potential legal liability,
of any violation.
- Board inspections encompass, among other things, whether the
firm has failed to identify departures from Generally Accepted
Accounting Principles ("GAAP") in its audits of financial
statements. This report's descriptions of any such auditing failures
necessarily involve descriptions of the related GAAP departures.
The Board, however, has no authority to prescribe the form or
content of an issuer's financial statements. That authority, and
the authority to make binding determinations concerning an issuer's
compliance with GAAP, rests with the Securities and Exchange Commission
("SEC" or "Commission"). Any description,
in this report, of perceived departures from GAAP should not be
understood as an indication that the Commission has considered
or made any determination regarding these GAAP issues unless otherwise
expressly stated.
INSPECTION OF D’ARCANGELO & CO., LLP
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board ("PCAOB" or "the Board") has conducted an inspection of the registered public accounting firm D’Arcangelo & Co., LLP ("the Firm"). The Board is issuing this report of that inspection in accordance with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 ("the Act").
The Act restricts the Board from publicly disclosing portions of an inspection
report that discuss certain types of deficiencies or certain other nonpublic information.1/
Because the inspection did not identify instances of such deficiencies, and because the
report does not otherwise disclose protected information, the Board is making the entire
report available to the public.
1/ The Board has elsewhere described in detail its approach to making
inspection-related information publicly available consistent with legal restrictions. See
Statement Concerning the Issuance of Inspection Reports, PCAOB Release No. 104-
2004-001 (August 26, 2004).
PART I
INSPECTION PROCEDURES AND CERTAIN OBSERVATIONS
Members of the Board's inspection staff ("the inspection team")
conducted fieldwork for the inspection from February 11, 2008 to
February 14, 2008. The fieldwork included procedures tailored to
the nature of the Firm, certain aspects of which the inspection
team understood at the outset of the inspection to be as follows:
| Number of offices |
5 (Millbrook, Poughkeepsie,
Purchase, Rome and Utica, New
York) |
| Ownership structure |
Limited liability partnership |
| Number of partners |
23 |
| Number of professional staff2/ |
108 |
| Number of issuer audit clients3/ |
5 |
2/ "Professional staff" includes all personnel of the Firm, except
partners or shareholders and administrative support personnel. The
number of partners and professional staff is provided here as an
indication of the size of the Firm, and does not necessarily represent
the number of the Firm's professionals who participate in audits
of issuers or are "associated persons" (as defined in the Act) of
the Firm.
3/ The number of issuer audit clients shown here is based on
the Firm's selfreporting and the inspection team's review of certain
information for inspection planning purposes. It does not reflect
any Board determination concerning which, or how many, of the Firm's
audit clients are "issuers" as defined in the Act.
Board inspections are designed to identify and address weaknesses and
deficiencies related to how a firm conducts audits.4/ To achieve
that goal, Board inspections include reviews of certain aspects
of selected audits performed by the firm and reviews of other matters
related to the firm's quality control system.
In the course of reviewing aspects of selected audits, an inspection
may identify ways in which a particular audit is deficient, including
failures by the firm to identify, or to address appropriately, respects
in which an issuer's financial statements do not present fairly
the financial position, results of operations, or cash flows of
the issuer in conformity with GAAP.5/ It is not the purpose of an
inspection, however, to review all of a firm's audits or to identify
every respect in which a reviewed audit is deficient. Accordingly,
a Board inspection report should not be understood to provide any
assurance that the firm's audits, or its issuer clients' financial
statements, are free of any
deficiencies not specifically described in an inspection report.
4/ This focus necessarily carries through to reports on inspections
and, accordingly, Board inspection reports are not intended to serve
as balanced report cards or overall rating tools.
5/ When it comes to the Board's attention that an issuer's financial
statements appear not to present fairly, in a material respect,
the financial position, results of operations, or cash flows of
the issuer in conformity with GAAP, the Board's practice is to report
that information to the SEC, which has jurisdiction to determine
proper accounting in issuers' financial statements.
A. Review of Audit Engagements
The scope of the inspection procedures performed included reviews of aspects of
the performance of both of the Firm's audits of the financial statements of issuers.
Those aspects were selected according to the Board’s criteria, and the Firm was not
allowed an opportunity to limit or influence the selection process. The engagement
reviews did not identify audit performance issues that, in the inspection team's view,
resulted in the Firm failing to obtain sufficient competent evidential matter to support its
opinion on the issuer's financial statements.
B. Review of Quality Control System
In addition to evaluating the quality of the audit work performed on
specific audits, the inspection included review of certain of the
Firm's practices, policies and procedures related to audit quality.
This review addressed practices, policies and procedures concerning
audit performance, training, compliance with independence standards,
client acceptance and retention, and the establishment of policies
and procedures. The inspection team did not identify anything that
it considered to be a quality control defect that warrants discussion
in a Board inspection report.
END OF PART I
PART II
RESPONSE OF THE FIRM TO DRAFT INSPECTION REPORT
Pursuant to section 104(f) of the Act, 15 U.S.C. §
7214(f), and PCAOB Rule 4007(a), the Firm provided a written response
to a draft of this report. Pursuant to section 104(f) of the Act
and PCAOB Rule 4007(b), the Firm's response, minus any portion granted
confidential treatment, is attached hereto and made part of this
final
inspection report.
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