Lucky, you can't say it is the auditors fault. I have extensive knowledge of the industry and auditors are not in the business of missing SEC deadlines. They would lose clients immediately.
The reality of the situation is that SIAF has a limited accounting department, is a international company with many JV's, has to get audited by a Chinese affiliate and also be signed off on by the US arm, year end coincides with Chinese New Year (remember when they were talking about changing the year end to help avoid this) and siaf is working on a thin budget.
The engagement letter most likely states several dates that the auditors must be in possession of certain documents for the march 31 deadline to be met. The most likely scenario is that these dates were not met by SIAF. SIAF might have had the (as JF puts it) “papers” ready long ago but it still did not give the auditors enough time to turn it around.
You are right that auditors will do flips for their highest paying most important clients to make sure deadlines are met. It appears that SIAF is not held in this regard by Madsen or SIAF simply is not willing to pay to have more resources put on the job to turn the 10K around in time.
The other very likely possibility is that SIAF did not leave enough time for the auditors to both review and comment and then siaf turn those comments around. So there is still a back and forth going on regarding certain footnotes and disclosures.
Bottom line is history is on the side of the auditors, siaf has filed an extension several times (you would not think that everytime it is the auditors fault). We all know this is a young company with limited resources so, although I am not happy about a possible extension, it would not be a surprise to me.
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