Press reports of large accounting fraud involving a public company often prompt scathing criticism of the company’s independent audit firm. The disclosure of the Livent fraud in the late summer and fall of 1998 caused Deloitte & Touche to become a target of such criticism. A Canadian financial analyst observed that investors depend on auditors to clamp down on their clients and force them to prepare reliable financial reports. “They [auditors] are the only ones in a position to question the policies, to question the numbers, to make sure they’re right.”