重磅！英国FRC正在调研拆解四大会计师事务所！

英国的金融监管机构财务报告委员会已经要求调查四大会计师事务所是否应该被分拆，目的是终止这些个公司在对英国最大上市公司账目的审计业务的支配性地位。

财务报告委员会首席执行官Stephen Haddrill说，英国竞争与市场管理局（CMA）应该对审计公司进行调查，以加强竞争并消除该领域的利益冲突。

其根本的想法将会迫使四大会计师事务所 - 德勤，安永，毕马威和普华永道 - 将英国的审计部门分拆为独立的企业。

Stephen Haddrill的干预缘起一系列公司会计丑闻，从英国的Carillion到南非的Steinhoff再到巴西的Petrobras。

“大家对审计行业失去信心，我认为行业需要紧急解决这个问题。

Haddrill先生曾与CMA就英国审计市场的调查进行了三次讨论，并计划进一步商谈。

对此，四大会计师事务所是如何评价的呢？

英国毕马威审计主管米歇尔欣奇利夫表示，该公司可能“看到需要重新评估我们的业务模式”。

不过，她补充说，毕马威认为，“多个业务线的企业能为投资者和社会带来更多收益”。

德勤表示，相信一个多个业务线的商业模式是确保“高质量审计”的最佳选择。

普华永道英国公司董事长凯文埃利斯说：“我们希望更多的大的审计市场参与者能够提高选择的积极性，并且我们对如何实现这一目标持开放态度。”

安永拒绝发表评论。

以下为来自金融时报的详细报道：

Probe urged into break-up of Big Four accountants

A UK financial regulator has called for an inquiry into whether the Big Four accountancy firms should be broken up, in a move aimed at ending their dominant position auditing the accounts of Britain’s biggest listed companies.

Stephen Haddrill, chief executive of the Financial Reporting Council that regulates accountants, said Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority should investigate the case for “audit only” firms in an effort to bolster competition and stamp out conflicts of interest in the sector.

The radical idea would force the big four firms — Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC — to spin off their UK audit arms into separate businesses.

Mr Haddrill’s intervention follows a string of corporate accounting scandals, ranging from Carillion in Britain to Steinhoff in South Africa and Petrobras in Brazil.

“There is a loss of confidence in audit and I think that the industry needs to address that urgently,” he said. “In some circles, there is a crisis of confidence.”

Mr Haddrill has held three discussions with the CMA about opening an investigation into the UK audit market, and further talks are scheduled.

He said the FRC was initially opposed to the idea of “audit only” firms when Michel Barnier, then the EU commissioner responsible for the internal market, broached the idea in 2011.

But the failure of subsequent UK and EU reforms to reduce the stranglehold of the Big Four over the audit market meant the idea of audit only firms “needs to be reconsidered”, he said.

“I’m keen that we revisit that question,” said Mr Haddrill.

Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC audited all but nine of the UK’s 350 largest listed companies at the end of their latest financial years, according to Manifest, a research firm that advises investors.

Their market share has grown in recent years despite an investigation by the UK Competition Commission — the predecessor body to the CMA — that resulted in a stricter regime for the accounting industry in 2013.

This included a requirement that FTSE 350 companies put their audit out to tender at least every 10 years. In 2016, the EU introduced rules that obliged listed companies in the bloc to change their auditor every 20 years.

Mr Haddrill said: “The Competition Commission introduced some remedies to try and encourage more competition. But there is no more competition. So it seems to me that we ought to have another look at [the audit market].”

The CMA said: “We are actively monitoring the remedies put in place following the Competition Commission’s inquiry . .This monitoring is ongoing and the [authority] remains open to looking further at this sector in the future.”

Mr Haddrill’s concerns about competition issues in the audit market have intensified in the light of the rapid growth of the Big Four firms’ consulting arms.

Longstanding critics of the Big Four fear a firm’s audit work could be compromised if it secures large additional fees from the same client by doing consulting work, in areas such as tax advice. A broader concern is that firms are too focused on consulting, and not enough on audit.

Mr Haddrill said: “If you’re in the senior leadership of the firm, I think you need to be focusing heavily on your public interest responsibility, which is the audit bit. [But] so much of your attention is bound to be drawn to the most profitable and the fastest-growing part of your business, which is not the public interest part.”

Other potential reforms put forward by Mr Haddrill included a “ringfencing” of accounting firms’ audit arms. He also flagged the case for a cap on the number of listed clients each firm is permitted to audit.

Political pressure is building on the FRC to take a tougher stance with audit firms after Carillion, once one of the UK’s largest construction companies, collapsed in January.

KPMG signed off on Carillion’s 2016 accounts in March last year, four months before the company issued the first of three profit warnings.

MPs on two influential Commons select committees last month questioned the judgment shown by KPMG and Deloitte in their respective roles as Carillion’s external and internal auditors.

Frank Field, Labour chair of the work and pensions committee, has concerns about the quality of audit work, and described the Big Four firms as a “cosy carousel”.

“It’s time for some proper competitive pressure,” he said.

Several influential investors are also supportive of a new investigation into how the audit market operates.

Natasha Landell-Mills, head of stewardship at Sarasin & Partners, an investment house, said: “We would certainly welcome an examination by the [CMA] of how audit quality is impacted by non-audit work, and the possibility of pure audit firms should be on the table.”

Euan Stirling, head of stewardship at Aberdeen Standard Investments, said: “We are increasingly concerned about a lack of competition available to companies when they look to procure audit services.”

Michelle Hinchliffe, head of audit at KPMG in the UK, said the firm could “see the need to re-evaluate our business models”.

However, she added, KPMG believed that “multi-disciplinary firms deliver more benefits for investors and society”.

Deloitte said it believed a multi-disciplinary business model was the best to ensure “high quality audits”.

Kevin Ellis, chairman of PwC UK, said: “We’d welcome more players in the large company audit market to boost choice and are open to ideas about how to achieve this.”

EY declined to comment.

Bigger fines backed

The head of the Financial Reporting Council has signalled his support for imposing larger fines on accounting firms for serious misconduct.

Chief executive Stephen Haddrill said he backed the idea of penalties of £10m or more — a big increase on the regulator’s record fine of £5.1m, which was meted out last year to PwC over one of its audits.

Mr Haddrill also hit back after MPs accused the FRC of being “useless” and “toothless” in the wake of Carillion’s collapse.

“I say that we’re not toothless and I think as an audit regulator we are among the most robust in the world,” he said.

“The job we’ve been asked to do is to monitor the quality of audit and to get firms to improve their performance if we find [an audit] is not up to standard, and we do that. If we feel there’s a serious deficiency, [we] take enforcement action which can lead to a fine.”

Christopher Clarke, a former court of appeal judge, last year conducted a review of the FRC’s sanctions regime, and concluded that the regulator should be issuing harsher punishments when “seriously bad incompetence” is identified at Big Four accounting firms.

Pointing to the case for fines of £10m or more, as recommended by Mr Clarke, Mr Haddrill said: “I think these firms are perfectly capable of paying fines of the sort of level that we’re talking about.”

In an attempt to rebut allegations of a lack of independence at the FRC, because its senior ranks include former employees of the Big Four, the regulator is about to add two new board members who Mr Haddrill said had “broader public experience”.

But he denied the FRC was too close to the profession it regulates, saying newly hired employees at the watchdog were not allowed to have worked for an accounting firm within the past three years.

“If you look at my executive committee, of the six of us, only two are accountants,” he said. “That feels about right for an organisation which is responsible for accounting standards and auditing.”

信息参考：https://www.ft.com/   由四大新鲜事儿翻译并编辑整理，转载请在文首注明来源。

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