Accountants commit to improve corporate climate disclosure A group of prominent accounting bodies, representing over 2.5 million accountants globally, have signed an “urgent” call to action pushing the profession to agree standards on climate change. The 14 bodies and 13 chief executives, who are all members of the Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability Project […]
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Can the FRC rescue its reputation? It has become one of the most disparaged – and lampooned – regulatory institutions of this century. The Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) oversight of the audit profession has been dubbed everything from ramshackle to timid, to lacking in any real pace or direction. The poor auditing practices of the […]
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The regulator found PwC had engaged in ‘improper professional conduct’ by performing prohibited non-audit services and breaching the independence rules in connection with 15 SEC-registered audit clients.
PwC partner Brandon Sprankle, who has been with the firm for over 20 years, has also been charged for causing the firm’s independence violations.
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Big Four fail in one in five audits The world’s four biggest accounting firms have been exposed for botching at least 20% of their audits following an inspection by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). In the most recent annual inspections of the Big Four, inspectors discovered Deloitte botched 20% of audits examined, PricewaterhouseCoopers […]
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The Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, has written to the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) asking the regulator to look again into whether the big four accountants should be broken up. Commenting on Twitter about the firms that dominate the audit market Cable said: “Questions remain over whether there is too much market dominance in too […]
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UK MPs investigating the collapse of Carillion gave Steve Haddrill, Financial Reporting Council (FRC) chief executive, a grilling over the regulator’s role in recent years. In his evidence to the joint inquiry by the House of Commons’ Work and Pensions and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy select committees Haddrill confirmed that the FRC had been […]
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The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has appointed a new chairman and replaced all the members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). The SEC appointed William Duhnke as chairman replacing Jim Doty along with J. Robert Brown, Kathleen Hamm, James Kaiser, and Duane DesParte who replaced Steve Harris, Lew Ferguson and Jeanette Franzel. The PCAOB was […]
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Markus Jooste, the chief executive of the global retail group, Steinhoff, which owns Poundland, Bensons for Beds and Pep & Co in the UK, has resigned after accounting irregularities were uncovered at the company. The company’s supervisory board has engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to conduct an independent investigation into the findings and would update the market […]
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The UK’s Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is looking to improve audit committee reporting in respect of company disclosures in annual reports and how auditors report information to audit committees, Melanie McLaren, executive director, audit and actuarial regulation division said in her speech at the regulator’s recent Developments in Audit conference. She said the FRC had launched a pilot project […]
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Since announcing in June that a new mandatory auditor rotation rule would be introduced in 2023 South Africa’s Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (IRBA) has surveyed the proxy voting results in respect of auditor re-appointments this year. The IRBA said that it had found a visible trend towards voting against the reappointment of auditors. Of […]
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