Sign of the Times? Next Global CEO of Ernst & Young Isn’t an Accountant. He’s a Lawyer.
And a Washington lobbyist.
But is he exactly what E&Y needs as regulators bear down on the Big Four?
Mark Weinberger, 50, who heads E&Y’s tax practice, will take over as global chairman and chief executive when Jim Turley retires in June 2013. Weinberger was an assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury in the George W. Bush administration and a member of the Social Security Advisory Board under Bill Clinton.
Perhaps significantly, his appointment comes amid more aggressive regulation of auditors in the U.S. and Europe following concerns about their independence from clients. Turley, who has led E&Y since 2001, said his successor had a “regulatory mindset” that would aid its relationship with audit regulators around the world.
A native of Scranton, Pa., Weinberger studied economics, law and finance. After earning his Bachelor of Arts from Emory University in Atlanta he earned an Master of Business Administration and J.D. from Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned a Masters of Laws degree from Georgetown University. He and his wife Nancy have four children and live in Potomac, Md.
He is currently E&Y’s global head of tax and sits on the firm’s Global Executive body. He also serves on E&Y’s Global Practice Group, Global Markets Executive and Global Public Policy Committees. He previously served as the Americas head of tax and has been a senior advisory partner for many of the organization’s largest clients. He also previously served on the Americas Executive and U.S. Operating Committee.
Before E&Y, Weinberger was co-founder of Washington Counsel, P.C., a D.C.-based law and legislative advisory firm that merged into Ernst & Young LLP and now operates as Washington Council Ernst & Young. In the 1990s, he was tax and budget aide to former Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.).
The first thing Mark Weinberger managed was an ice cream parlor one summer while attending Emory University. Members of his considerable extended family were delighted to learn the news, but perhaps none so much as his mother, Goldye Weinberger, of Scranton, Pa. “I’m his mother, I always knew he was destined for greatness,” she told a reporter.
She just didn’t know in what. She remembers her son – one of four children, the rest girls – always outside, playing baseball or basketball with kids in the neighborhood. He was a good student, but not a “numbers” kid and not bookish. She called him “a student of the world.”
She admitted she’s somewhat surprised her son, who is a lawyer, is head of a renowned accounting firm.
“Mark always has a good head on his shoulders and he followed a path that several in our family went on,” said his cousin, Andrew Weinberger. “He has the combination of education, work ethic and family values that contributed to his success.”
Weinberger’s public policy experience is unusual for the head of a global audit firm, Arvind Hickman, editor of the International Accounting Bulleting, tells Reuters.
“I can’t think of too many global chiefs who have had a distinguished career in government. Normally they go the other way, from the profession into high positions in the public and private sectors,” he said.
Weinberger will be taking over at a crucial time for the audit profession, which is under scrutiny from regulators in the United States and Europe for auditors’ performance during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, when they failed to warn of problems at major banks that collapsed.
The main U.S. auditor watchdog, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, is considering whether to require audit firm rotation, a measure vehemently opposed by the audit industry, along with several other reforms. Rotation would force major companies to change auditors periodically. Many have the same accounting firms working for them for decades.
The European Union also is mulling proposals that could force the largest audit firms to split off their consulting businesses, as well as auditor rotation.
Ernst & Young is facing a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General over its audits of failed bank Lehman Brothers and an official review of its audits of Japan’s Olympus Corp. An unofficial panel cleared Ernst & Young of responsibility for an accounting fraud at Olympus on Tuesday.
“One of his first tasks will be guiding the network through this period of turmoil and any potential punitive and reputational damage,” Hickman said.
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