Speaker

Francine McKenna

Transparency Reporter, Dow Jones MarketWatch

Photograph of Francine McKenna Currently a reporter in Washington, DC, forMarketWatch, a leading online financial news outlet, Francine McKenna covers financial regulation and legislation. McKenna’s work is featured frequently inThe Wall Street Journal; her reporting and commentary have also been featured in theFinancial Times,Accountancy Age, Accountancy Magazine, the University of Chicago Booth School of BusinessChicago Booth Review magazine, and various other financial, media, and technology publications.

She is currently on a spring quarter sabbatical from MarketWatch, participating in its Journalist in Residence fellowship at the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. McKenna also teaches a course in international business as an adjunct professor for the MBA program at American University’s Kogod School of Business.

McKenna's perspective as a financial journalist is informed by more than 25 years of experience in executive roles in professional services, financial services, and manufacturing firms. Prior to becoming a journalist, McKenna was a director in PwC’s internal audit and governance advisory services group, where she audited PwC’s post-Sarbanes-Oxley response to heightened compliance and regulatory scrutiny. Before that, she was regional vice president for the Midwest at Jefferson Wells (a subsidiary of Manpower); led the industrial, automotive, and transportation practice as BearingPoint’s (formerly KPMG Consulting) first female managing director in Latin America; and directed the Y2K project management office for JPMorgan Chase’s Latin America operations.

Before joining MarketWatch, McKenna wrote about corporate governance, risk management, and professional services firms and their impact on financial institutions in hercolumn “Accountable” for theAmerican Banker blogBankThink, and about corporate fraud, the accounting industry, and the impact of accounting and audit on investors in her column“Accounting Watchdog” forForbes.com. She was named a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism in2010 in the online commentary and blogging category and in2013 in the magazines category.

In 2006, McKenna created the blog re: The Auditors to explore in an independent, objective, and often critical way the role, responsibility, and regulation of the audit and accounting industry in the global capital markets, and in particular, the business of the Big Four audit firms.

Early in her professional life, McKenna worked as an accounting manager, financial reporting manager, and controller in private industry. She began her career in internal audit at Chicago’s Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust. She has lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, and is fluent in Spanish.

McKenna is often called upon as an expert source, guest speaker, and litigation consultant because of her deep knowledge of the internal operations of audit firms.