COMMISSIONER HUNT: You have the view, according to your statement, that you believe no partner, regardless of location or function, should have any financial interest in an audit client of the firm?
MR. COOK: I guess I’ve grown up with this rule so deeply embedded in my own sense of the right answers that I just don’t feel comfortable with the notion that a partner in a firm in a different location could be talking to a business colleague about an investment in an audit client of the firm and not be bothered by that possibility.
I think, as a practical matter for the firms monitoring individual partner ownerships and aggregating ownerships for various tests that might be required, will itself be a challenge.
And further, I always believed in my own professional life that clients were clients of the entirefirm and should have access to all the resources of the firm. If people are precluded from MS payday loans serving clients because of their financial interest, that would go against my grain in terms of the way a firm should serve its clients.
COMMISSIONER HUNT: And you’re not concerned that perhaps the partners would be precluded some from lucrative investments with some of the clients?
MR. COOK: I’m not. I find that there are ample –I always found in my own experience, although not much of an investor, but found ample opportunities to invest in attractive companies that were not clients of the firm. Continue reading “I wish they were all clients of the firm, but some of them, unfortunately, were not”