Wasps report £3.8m losses and rising £43m debt

[Tiger93]

Still no sign of the Wasps accounts, very strange.

[Leicestertinytiger]

Not really, if their tax year is the standard March - April, they will have until October to file the accounts and until end of December to pay any taxes.

[Tiger93]

why are companies house taking legal action then..

status is 'overdue'

[Leicestertinytiger]

Maybe their tax year is different to the regular tax year. If the status is overdue it would seem they are having difficulties in fudging the figures.

Not going to cry them a river. Must be a dire state if the old accountants can’t work their magic.

[biffer]

Maybe their tax year is different to the regular tax year. If the status is overdue it would seem they are having difficulties in fudging the figures.

Not going to cry them a river. Must be a dire state if the old accountants can’t work their magic.

It's the accounts for the bond scheme, not the club as a whole. Seems like it's from the previous year as they were already extended from a previous December deadline.

https://coventryobserver.co.uk/news/was ... aking-law/

Also in that article: I'm really not convinced the Ricoh is worth £60million. That might be how much it would cost to rebuild from scratch, but that doesn't equate to what it's worth.

[Christophelp]

Not really, if their tax year is the standard March - April, they will have until October to file the accounts and until end of December to pay any taxes.

Wasps Holdings Ltd (main trading company) - accounts to 30 June 2017, due at Companies House by 31 March 2018 - now 1 month late. https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/04187289
Wasps Finance Plc (bond issuer) - accounts to 30 June 2017, due at Companies House by 31 December 2017 (earlier deadline because they are a Plc) - now 4 months late. https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09435073

[Tiger93]

Indeed, the valuation is so dodgy and absolutely stinks.

Cheers for the links

[Mark62]

Sky is reporting Wasps have been forced to line up a new auditor after an overstatement of its profits triggered a breach of its agreements with lenders

[TomWeston]

Sky is reporting Wasps have been forced to line up a new auditor after an overstatement of its profits triggered a breach of its agreements with lenders

The directors are solely responsible for preparing the accounts, the auditors only need to state that they are true and fair. It seems that the directors were trying it on with regard to the accounting treatment of a particular transaction and the auditors called them on it. Any new auditors, however pleased they might be to have a new client, will need to keep their eyes open for future such activity.

[Tiger93]

https://news.sky.com/story/pwc-offside- ... t-11356245

Indeed. What a shambles

[TomWeston]

https://news.sky.com/story/pwc-offside- ... t-11356245

Indeed. What a shambles

Whatever you think about the quality of work carried out by the ‘Big 4’, you would hardly expect a middling firm to make improvements or be insistent on making changes. PWC could afford to make a stand whatever the Insects board say about relations having been friendly since.

[strawclearer]

https://news.sky.com/story/pwc-offside- ... t-11356245

Indeed. What a shambles

Whatever you think about the quality of work carried out by the ‘Big 4’, you would hardly expect a middling firm to make improvements or be insistent on making changes. PWC could afford to make a stand whatever the Insects board say about relations having been friendly since.

I'm treading in areas I know nothing about ("never stopped you before" I hear you say) but is it up to the auditors to "make improvements or be insistent on making changes"?

[Christophelp]

https://news.sky.com/story/pwc-offside- ... t-11356245

Indeed. What a shambles

Whatever you think about the quality of work carried out by the ‘Big 4’, you would hardly expect a middling firm to make improvements or be insistent on making changes. PWC could afford to make a stand whatever the Insects board say about relations having been friendly since.

I work for 'a middling firm' and I can guarantee you that if there is a complete disagreement about how a transaction should be treated - such as when a company wants to treat a loan from a shareholder as income, which is an 'interesting' interpretation of such a transaction - the auditor will resign. The audit fee for the Wasps Holdings Ltd group (from it's 2016 accounts) is £66,500. Whilst 'a middling firm' would prefer not to lose that type of fee, it's hardly going to result in 'a middling firm' going out of business.

I'm treading in areas I know nothing about ("never stopped you before" I hear you say) but is it up to the auditors to "make improvements or be insistent on making changes"?

If (after reviewing all of the evidence) the auditors have a fundamental disagreement with the accounting treatment adopted by a company, the usual course of action is that the auditors will tell the company what they (the auditors) believe the correct accounting treatment should be and if the company declines to change their treatment to that and so a fundamental disagreement still exists, the auditors will have no option but to resign.

They will then have to state their reasons for resigning (so making any potential new auditor aware of the disagreement). You could describe that as the auditors 'making improvements or being insistent on making changes' because it forces the company to either adopt the accounting treatment the auditors have suggested or to find another auditor who is willing to accept that the company's accounting treatment is correct.

That's not to say that in this case PWC are resigning because WHL haven't adopted the accounting treatment suggested by PWC and that the new auditor will agree with the WHL accounting treatment - it's much more likely (reading between the lines) that the PWC/WHL relationship has broken down because of the fundamental disagreement.

[TomWeston]

I'm a retired FCA and trained at PWC's forerunner, Gutter Bros. I've prepared accounts for audit for international banks for whom I've worked and gotten away with some flankers.

Some details of the transaction have leaked out. Iirc the Insects filed provisional accounts before they were audited because they were late and PWC subsequently disagreed with a major item.

PWC can afford to stand down on principle, particularly if the item has been made public - a £66k fee won't bust a small firm but they might just be more malleable on that principle, in which case we wouldn't hear about it until the proverbial hit the fan later..

[RagingBull]

http://www.wasps.co.uk/your-club/bonds/secured-bonds

Accounts up.

Bonds have dropped 11%