Patisserie Holdings Said It Was Hiring an Audit Firm That No Longer Exists to Replace Grant Thornton U.K. as Auditor

Posted on by Jason Bramwell

It’s the Friday before Christmas, and when you have a bad case of holiday brain, sometimes mistakes can happen. Sometimes these mistakes can be hilarious. Like this one from Patisserie Holdings, parent company of U.K. coffeehouse chain Patisserie Valerie:

What Patisserie Holdings meant to say was that it was hiring RSM U.K. as its new auditor, which the company stated in a corrected press release issued two hours later:

 

Patisserie Holdings is dumping Grant Thornton U.K. as auditor because GT is under investigation by the Financial Reporting Council for its audit of Patisserie’s financial statements for 2015-17.

The café chain almost collapsed this year due to “potentially fraudulent” accounting irregularities, which set off a chain of events that included the suspension, and then resignation, of CFO Chris Marsh, who was arrested on Oct. 12 before being released on bail.

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