- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Neil Hodge2021-03-18T16:14:00
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.
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The U.K. government’s confirmed plans to shake up the audit market and improve corporate governance for the country’s biggest companies has received mixed response, with some key stakeholders lamenting “missed” opportunities.
U.K. companies have improved corporate reporting—particularly on environmental and social issues—despite more instances of noncompliance with the Corporate Governance Code, according to the Financial Reporting Council’s latest review.
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.
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after an ambitious first three years in the role that have seen the agency work to update many of its standards deemed outdated.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.
