The ‘flawless’ audit exists in the mind alone. Regulators such as the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) are, therefore, having to deal with the many that, in varying degrees, are flawed.

However, the FRC’s practice of allowing so many years to pass before reporting their findings and punishing the culprits undoubtedly weakens its authority and blunts its effectiveness.

Since companies’ financial statements are published annually the time taken to audit those statements must, by definition, be less than a year. Yet consider the FRC’s latest finding - on Deloitte’s audit of the software company Autonomy Corporation. Can it seriously be claimed that justice has been served – despite the imposition of a £15m fine on the firm (plus costs of over £5m) and a total of £750,000 on two responsible partners – when the disgraceful audit work to which the finding relates took place more than a decade earlier?

Why was th