Every MP pushing for a reduced university sector should be asked if they would like to close the one nearest their constituency.

The Tories have decided that universities 'create' Labour voters and/or woke leftists and that basically drives what they're spewing out about higher education. Same as with council housing in the past

Our big splash in the Financial Times today: just 1 in 4 UK companies that went bust received a going concern warning by Big Four auditors in their final years' accounts. Non-Big Four auditors were even worse. Read the thread from the The Audit Reform Lab below 👇

More on the uselessness of the “Big Four” accounting and consultancy firms. Audit firms failed to raise the alarm before three-quarters of big UK corporate collapses since 2010, according to The Audit Reform Lab research. Simon Foy ft.com/content/14a63c…

Three in four audit reports failed to warn that companies risked going bankrupt in the year before their collapse. Here's how each of the Big Four performed: on.ft.com/3V8kppe

Calculations by Simon Jack show in around half of the years Australian firm Macquarie was Thames Water’s biggest shareholder, dividends exceeded the amount of profit the company was making, while debt quadrupled from £2.5bn to over £10bn...17/21

Another quick plug for this: just one in four large companies that fail received a going concern warning from auditors in their final year’s accounts in our dataset - as featured in yesterday’s FT

Forced to work in the rain unnecessarily? Join a union.

“Better quality audits now” - the FT View on the urgent need for a government, any government, to act on audit reform on.ft.com/4dZiRFQ

We (the The Audit Reform Lab) are in the Financial Times again; this time in the editorial. Really great to see so much coverage of the Lab in the press recently - let's hope the politicians catch on as we head into the election! ft.com/content/0519dc… Here's the report: auditreformlab.group.shef.ac.uk/reward-for-fai…

How the hell can this be a good idea?

In case you’re wondering how the Conservative Party became functionally extinct as a democratic political entity🤔 (see also: the US Republican Party)…👇 blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofboo…

The Spectre of State Capitalism is out and open access! Download your beach read for free!

The King's Speech yesterday put the case for audit reform front and centre. Here's a quick news story from the The i paper quoting our director Adam Leaver on why its so important inews.co.uk/news/business/…

Labour really must ensure “Never again” on the VIP lane procurement corruption, sale of peerages & knighthoods, regulatory bribing by vested interests & stuffing party ‘clients’ into quango jobs during 2020-4. UK needs anti-corruption body as in Australia. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpol…

Lex Greensill blew over £60k on legal fees trying to stop the FT obtaining a document summarising serious allegations of misconduct. He also tried to stick us with his ludicrous bill. So it would be a real shame if you now read the document in full 👇🏻 ft.com/content/0c7063…

It seems we are now in esteemed company... this is pretty much the argument we made in the CRAFiC_UOS hollow firms paper and our Productivity NW+ research. How financialized fair value accounting sedates entrepreneurialism and disincentivises investment on.ft.com/3Ak23tu

friends, here is a new paper with Lukas Linsi, where we map the current state of Chinese-European investment patterns. We weigh in on the decoupling/derisking debates in the EU and beyond - check it out if you're interested 👇 open access in JCMS: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jc…