Nice acerbic column by Ruth Sunderland…

Auditors at Ernst & Young would not notice a black hole if they fell into one. The firm checked the books of collapsed Christmas club Farepak for a number of years, yet failed to raise any alarms of a looming collapse.

That will come as little surprise to savers with Equitable Life. Ernst & Young gave the failed insurer a clean bill of health before a £1.5bn chasm opened in its accounts.

E&Y, unlike the poor families whose Christmas is blighted, did very well out of Farepak. It charged £144,000 in fees for its 2005 group audit and £77,000 in 2004. Unbelievably, it is refusing to make any donations to the Farepak Response Fund, saying it would be ‘inconsistent with our responsibilities as auditors to make payment to creditors’. That statement has all the hallmarks of a company being led by its lawyers rather than its moral sense…