The role of the auditors

I’d like to thank Media for giving us the opportunity to help. Our participation is part of our on-going commitment to the entertainment and media industry.

Allow me to also congratulate the organisers on having attracted so many entrants this year — 144. There would have been more but some entries failed to make the deadline and were not accepted. Next year perhaps!

The 10 judges faced a truly daunting task when reviewing the submissions. As an indication of both the workload put on the judges as well as the competition faced by the entrants, one category had as many as 25 entries.

Let me explain the judging process and our involvement. As usual, we meet with the organisers during the year to review and agree the approach to the entry and judging process. The clear objective of this is to continually enhance the sophistication of the undertaking and to put into place the necessary safeguards to ensure the overall integrity of the process and results.

The judging has two phases. In the first, judges review and score each submission based on a series of criteria that are tailored to the individual category.Votes are submitted directly to me and are tabulated and aggregated.

Based on the results of the first round, judges gather in Singapore to discuss the merits of the top five in each category. It should be noted that the judges are not aware of the ranking of an entry within the top five. Having considered the merits of each entry,the judges then individually rank each in a particular category. My fellow Singapore-based partner, Greg Unsworth, personally received these secret ballots which are then aggregated, checked and the results finalised. 

I’d like to congratulate the winners. It has been a tough year but the enthusiasm that surrounds AOY is a clear indication that the industry is in the right state of mind to celebrate its achievements. Let the after-party roll on — let’s hope someone remembers to invite me!

Marcel Fenez is global managing partner, entertainment and media practice, at PwC