Accounting firm Grant Thornton resigned as auditor of Peoples Community Bancorp last week after the $38.4 million bank hired one of GT's managers as CFO.
The firm was forced to resign due to independence issues.
According to Section 206 of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, an accounting firm cannot conduct the audit of a company if the CEO, CFO or other high-ranking executives worked for the auditor within the last year. The exact wording of SOX 206 is as follows:
It shall be unlawful for a registered public accounting firm to perform for an issuer any audit service required by this title, if a chief executive officer, controller, chief financial officer, chief accounting officer or any person serving in an equivalent position for the issuer was employed by that registered independent public accounting firm and participated in any capacity in the audit of that issuer during the 1-year period preceding the date of the initiation of the audit.
Though the Grant Thornton manager in question, Dale Schaeffer, had resigned from the firm several months before joining Peoples Community Bancorp, he had worked on the company's audits last year.
"That's why we wanted him," the company's EVP Tom Noe told The Cincinnati Post.
In a letter to the SEC, the bank noted there were no disagreements with Grant Thornton, and the firm submitted a one-sentence letter to the SEC affirming that information.
Both filings, as well as a spreadsheet of all auditor changes year-to-date, is available in the box above, right.
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