Supermicro chairman and CEO Charles Liang triumphantly announced to investors in early December 2024 that a special investigation spurred by the abrupt resignation of audit firm Ernst & Young had found no evidence of fraud or misconduct.
The rub? The investigation resulted in a series of recommendations that Supermicro agreed to carry out, including that the IT solutions manufacturer would appoint a chief accounting officer and “immediately” start a search for a new chief financial officer to replace David Weigand, who took the CFO role in February 2021. No wrongdoing was pinned on Weigand, but the committee’s findings stated that there were “lapses” in the rehiring of nine people who had previously resigned in 2018 following an entirely different 2017 audit-related investigation. Given that Weigand, as CFO and chief compliance officer, “had primary responsibility for the process of hiring these employees, he had primary responsibility for processes lapses,” the investigation committee stated. That included Supermicro entering into a consulting arrangement with its former CFO—who had also resigned in relation to the 2017 investigation—and then not informing EY or the board’s audit committee.
