Academy bans two PwC partners responsible for Oscars mix-up

Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts and Sciences has decided to ban the two PwC partners who were responsible for the Best Picture award mix-up, from being present at the future Oscars nights.

For 83 years, PricewaterhouseCoopers has taken care of the voting count and the award giving process of the Oscars, being considered the most professional and trustworthy company to do the job. This changed when during the last Oscars night the Best Picture award was initially given by mistake to the makers of La La Land, which minutes later discovered that it was originally meant for another nominated film, Moonlight. This turned out to be a worldwide bad impression for the Oscars, which looked unorganized and unprofessional. A few days later the Wall Street Journal reported that the person responsible for delivering the Best Picture envelope, Brian Cullinan (chairman of PwC’s US board), was distracted by tweeting a picture of the actress Emma Stone (then deleted) moments before he had to deliver the envelope.  This may have caused the delivery of the wrong envelope to the presenter of the award, Warren Beatty.

Besides banning the two people responsible for the mix-up, the Academy does not seem to be planning to fire PwC, which will most likely remain the company responsible for the awards.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/8b543022-fed2-11e6-96f8-3700c5664d30