PwC will keep the Oscars
News broke last week that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will keep PwC as their official ballot counter.
In case you’ve forgotten, PwC botched the best picture award at the Oscars in February 2017. PwC Partner Brian Cullinan erroneously handed Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty the wrong envelope. He handed them the envelope for best actress instead of the envelope for best picture. Both Beatty and Dunaway have difficulty reading because of their advanced age. They saw La La Land on the winning card and just read it out loud. Instead the movie Moonlight should have won.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs who is the President of the Academy stated that pwc made a “presentation of revised protocols and ambitious controls.” She also stated the Academy was “ unsparing in our assessment that the mistake made by representatives of the firm was unacceptable.” There is no doubt that it was unacceptable. Brian Cullinan tweeted out evidence of his incompetence. He was tweeting pictures of Emma Stone while he should have been overseeing the presentation of best picture.
Both him and Martha Ruiz are supposed to memorize the winners of the categories in case something like this were to happen. What they should have done is rush on stage immediately instead of letting the wrong movie accept an award that isn’t theirs. Pricewaterhousecoopers will be getting a second chance but both partners will not. They will have to find another account to keep them busy in the rest of their Januaries and Februaries at PwC.
That doesn’t bode to well for Martha Ruiz and Brian Cullinan’s year end review.
In order for PwC to retain the account, they had to put new controls in place to prevent the same thing from happening again.
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