Parker Randall's HK track record
27th October 2012

The HKICPA announced yesterday that on 8-Oct-2012 (yes, it took them 18 days to announce it), a Disciplinary Committee of HKICPA ordered that the practising certificate of Peter Lau Po Ming (Mr Lau) be cancelled on 17-Nov-2012 and he be banned from practising in 2013 and 2014.

The announcement and the Reasons for Decision (Reasons) have been unnecessarily self-censored by HKICPA. We call on the HKICPA to be more transparent - isn't that what accountants are for? Webb-site will fill in the blanks. The "Corporate Practice P" referred to is Parker Randall CF (H.K.) CPA Ltd (Parker Randall). According to the Reasons, Mr Lau was its sole practising director until he "ceased" to be a director on 10-May-2010.

There are audits of two listed companies involved in the Reasons. "Company A", which must be New City Development Group Ltd (New City, 0456) and "Company B", which must be Grand T G Holdings Ltd (GTG, 8299). The New City case involves its 31-Dec-2008 accounts, and the GTG case involves its 31-Mar-2009 accounts.

We won't repeat the details of the Complaint (which Mr Lau admitted) here - you can find that in the Reasons, and now that you know the companies, you can read the accounts in parallel with the Reasons and it will make more sense.

As we noted, Mr Lau left Parker Randall, or at least ceased to be its sole practising director, on 10-May-2010. The (or a) current director is Parker Seto Man Fai (Mr Seto). He is an INED of 2 HK-listed companies, including New City, to which he was appointed on 21-Oct-2009. Parker Randall resigned from New City on 14-Apr-2010, presumably before Mr Seto took over at Parker Randall. We assume there is no connection between his chosen English name (Parker), which he uses as a director in the USA, and the Parker Randall brand. It is unclear whether Parker Randall is still a member firm of Parker Randall International Ltd.

Now thanks to a wonderful new feature of Webb-site, you can look at the past and present list of HK-listed audit clients of Parker Randall. You can see that they have had 8 listed audit clients, of which 7 remain, and the average annualised Webb-site Total Return on the shares of those companies during the period of service is negative, -32.04% p.a. (excluding one which has been suspended since the appointment). In fact all of them are negative - you could not have failed to lose money if you had bought shares in any of them when Parker Randall was appointed and held them for the duration. We are not of course implying any cause and effect, merely a correlation. Total returns are updated daily, so these numbers will change.

Isn't that a cool feature?

Incidentally, the members of the Disciplinary Committee were also blanked out in the Reasons, unlike the names of judges in court rulings. So we'll tell you, from the latest calendar of cases, they were: solicitor Betty Chan Ka Wai (Chairman), architect Wilbert Ching Tak Keung, barrister Roxanne Ismail, accountant Alan Tang Chung Wah, and accountant Lesley Yeung Kit Kam.

© Webb-site.com, 2012