HSBC Dumping KPMG for PwC as Auditor
Alright, alright, alright. We knew this was possible. Let's try to keep things civil. HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Europe’s largest bank, appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditor, dropping KPMG LLP after more than two decades. PwC will audit the 2015 fiscal year for the lender, subject to approval from shareholders at the bank’s annual meeting in May, […]
Big 4 Firms Performing Quite Well in the Self-Preservation Department
If you are able to find Google's homepage and have a couple of functioning digits, it isn't difficult to find news of Big 4 audit firms settling lawsuits over the past few years. Satyam. Countrywide. Bear Stearns. Sino-Forest. There are others. There will be more. In the UK, regulators have been grilling the Big 4 over […]
PwC Asks That You Look No Further Than the Firm’s Loss of a Client to Ernst & Young as Evidence of a ‘Fiercely Competitive’ Audit Market
Last month when PwC filed a paper with the UK's Competition Commission that contradicted the notion "that the audit market is static and uncompetitive," a Grant Thornton partner damn near soiled himself. Recently, there has been a development that James Chalmers, PwC's head of Assurance in the UK, would like to call attention to: Gas exploration […]