EY banned over Wirecard work

Following the announcement, current and former employees have been fined up to EUR 500,000 each. The regulator allegedly did not come to any formal decision on how the action was made, or whether EY did things intentionally or not. Questions on the firm’s criminal and civil liabilities have not been answered.  

Wirecard collapsed into insolvency in 2020 after disclosing that much of its revenue and corporate cash did not exist. The firm reportedly received unqualified audits from EY for more than a decade. 

The EY organisation also lost multiple large audit clients and customers, such as DWS, kfW, and Commerzbank. It did not win any significant new mandates since the announcement as well. 

EY mentioned that it will offer comments on the situation only after Apas issues an official statement, as it fully cooperated with the watchdog during the whole investigation process and concluded important lessons from its case. 

EY’s past partnerships and launches

EY partnered with o9 Solutions in March of 2023 to provide advanced supply chain planning solutions backed by artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), big data, and cloud computing. The alliance was focused on helping next-generation global enterprises in adopting integrated business planning solutions and modernise their core supply chain, as well as the commercial, profit, and loss function. 

The partnership compared o8 Solutions’ AI- and ML- supported planning, analytics, and data platform, known as the Digital Brain, with the deep supply chain knowledge, system integration, and data science capabilities of EY US. The o9 Solutions’ enterprise software platform unified business processes, transforming traditionally slow, as well as siloed planning functions into integrated and `intelligent` planning. 

Earlier in January 2023, the fintech launched the EY Retail Intelligence solution that was built on the Microsoft Cloud to offer customers a fast and secure shopping experience. 

Following this launch, the EY Retail Intelligence product offered merchants, traders, and businesses a new way to reach the expectations of clients and users. Moreover, the solution facilitated the user’s experience from beginning to end, from the initial contact with the merchants and its products to the personalised targeting and evaluation through one solution and a data bank. Customers also had the possibility to resume all their activities at any time and place they would choose, like an online store, physical store, or even a call center. 

Customers had multiple benefits, such as the capability to access the same data about suppliers from all channels, as well as information on clients, products, finances, logistics, and users in real-time. This offered retailers and businesses a complete view of their analytics and data information.