US audit industry watchdog warns China on intervention

Any moves by the Chinese government to prevent shipping reports out of China for review would be viewed as “a long-arm interdiction,” the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) said Monday, Reuters reported. China’s regulators have asked the Big Four global audit firms to report information they may have provided on listed Chinese firms to oversees regulators. The PCAOB and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have been negotiating with their Chinese counterparts over joint audit inspections in the wake of accounting scandals at US-listed Chinese companies. PCAOB Chairman James Doty criticized the move, saying that the bilateral relationship had hit “new bumps in the road.” Addressing the impact of globalization on the audit industry, Doty went on to say that “US markets and investors have been unfairly taken advantage of by those who want the benefits of American markets but not American rules.”