UT official: Blade misreported on UTIE
2/3/2013The Blade owes its readers, the Plante Moran accounting firm, and the boards of the University of Toledo and the University of Toledo Innovation Enterprises an apology for its misreporting in the Jan. 31 article “UT fails to scrutinize development agency.”
The article stated: “A private auditing firm, Plante Moran, in a universitywide audit dated June 30, 2012, included three paragraphs about University of Toledo Innovation Enterprises, known as UTIE, but it did not track the $7.5 million in investments UTIE made in start-up firms and did not report on multimillion dollar write-offs of UT funds lost in the ventures.”
Both the headline and the statement are incorrect. UTIE is scrutinized by UT on a continuous basis and included in the universitywide audit that received an unqualified opinion from external auditors.
Plante Moran, the auditing firm retained by the state auditor to audit UT’s financial statements, did not include anything in the audit except its opinion. Financial statements are the responsibility of the management of the university.
As a unit of the University of Toledo, the investments of UTIE are reported in the June 30, 2011, and June 30, 2012, financial data presented in the audit report.
DAVID DABNEY
Chief Financial Officer
University of Toledo