Reuters-

Way back in February 2011, the crackerjack blogger Francine McKenna of re: The Auditors asked an interesting question in a column for Forbes: Given the widespread failures of small and regional banks in the financial crisis, why hadn’t the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation brought any lawsuits against the audit firms that signed off on reports that turned out to be materially misleading? McKenna noted that two private lawyers had predicted such suits were coming in a column for the Legal Intelligencer, but said so far none had been filed. By then the FDIC was actively pursuing directors and officers of failed banks, but auditors seemed to be off the hook.

That’s no longer true. On Wednesday the FDIC, as receiver for the Colonial Bank of Montgomery, Alabama, sued PricewaterhouseCoopers and Crowe Horwath in federal court in Montgomery, claiming that they committed professional malpractice and breach of contract by failing to detect that two Colonial employees helped the notorious (and defunct) mortgage lender Taylor Bean poke hundred-million-dollar holes in Colonial’s balance sheet. (PwC was the external auditor and Crowe Horwath performed internal audits.)

[REUTERS ON THE CASE]

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