- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Neil Hodge2021-08-31T15:17:00
The Big Four audit firms have refused to back a U.K. government plan to break their dominance of the market by forcing them to share work with smaller competitors to give them a foothold.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating whether large audit firm consulting services affect auditor independence. Any action taken might mirror the United Kingdom’s ongoing actions to break up the Big Four’s dominance.
The U.K. Financial Reporting Council released the results of its 2020/21 audit quality inspections, in which it singled out KPMG for “unacceptable” deficiencies regarding the firm’s audits of banks and similar entities.
The U.K. government has unveiled proposals designed to end the Big Four accounting firms’ dominance of the region’s audit market while also making companies and executives more directly accountable—and liable—for failures in corporate reporting.
Chinese authorities banned PwC’s Chinese unit from performing audits in the country for six months, labeling the subsidiary’s flawed audit work as complicit in the failure of giant property developer Evergrande.
Erica Williams was reappointed to a second term as chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board after an ambitious first three years in the role that have seen the agency work to update many of its standards deemed outdated.
Software company Autodesk said it won’t restate several years of financial statements following an audit committee investigation into potential accounting misconduct.
