mark w. olson was the chairman of commission on audit.
mark w. olson was the chairman of commission on audit.
who is the chairman of commission on audit?
mark w. olson
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Na
responsibility for monitoring the finances of the local authorities comes under the various district auditors, who are appointed by, but do not actually report to, the audit commission (and the audit commission in turn worked in partnership with, but operated independently of, a number of central government departments). although during the 1980s the audit commission had become increasingly concerned about the use of financial derivatives, it had never taken any steps to prevent this other than simply advocating that local authorities use caution. but in june 1988 they would discover not all local authorities had heeded that advice. at that time a new team member had recently relocated to london swaps desk of goldman sachs, and almost immediately she noticed that (a) hammersmith council had entered into an absolutely massive number of swaps with the bank, and (b) that all of them were entered on the same side, i.e. betting that interest rates would fall. she telephoned the audit commission's office and explained her concerns. the audit commission then telephoned the council's district auditor, mr tony hazell at deloitte, who asserted that he had no idea about any significant swaps exposure on the part of the local authority. the audit commission then telephoned the council's chief executive, who confirmed that the council had been entering into swaps, but did not think that it had any significant exposure. the chief executive reportedly then stated: "i really wouldn't worry about this ... everybody knows that interest rates are going to fall." upon hearing this, which the audit commission took for confirmation that hammersmith's exposure was in fact entirely unhedged, teams from both the audit commission and the district auditor were sent in to investigate.
local authorities swaps litigation