Auditors are traditionally quiet participants in a company’s final annual report, signing their firm’s name on a form letter with a simple pass or fail grade. But a push to gain more insight into their process is growing globally, meeting demands for more disclosure from both regulators and investors. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the U.S. government’s audit watchdog, said it will issue a proposal on auditor identification by December. “The chairman has made it a priority,” PCAOB spokeswoman Colleen Brennan said. [CFOJ]

“Companies are under pressure from investors to get the best auditor they can,” said Paul Gillis, an accounting professor at Peking University in Beijing. More than 200 Chinese companies are listed on U.S. exchanges, and hundreds more trade on over-the-counter bulletin boards. In the last five months, at least 15 have upgraded to a Big Four auditor — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers or KPMG — from a smaller firm, according to an analysis from Audit Analytics. [