A top SEC accountant warned Tuesday against companies and auditors, including those in the SPAC market, using the “passage of time” as an excuse to downplay significant accounting errors and not formally flag them to investors.
While investors generally rely on the most current—and accurate—financial statement, material errors need to get fixed, said Lindsay McCord, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Corporation Finance chief accountant. Past financials and how a company fixes errors lends key insight into the reliability of current financial results, she said at an accounting conference in Washington.
“It really does go to the reliability and quality ...