Spectre of the unauditable company

摘要

To audit or not to audit? That is a question, say the big accountancy firms, they will be increasingly forced to ask if the government does not concede to their requests to end unlimited auditor liability. Ministers and their aides will this month start ploughing through responses to the consultation it launched on this issue just before Christmas. The Big Four argue their case by raising the scary prospect of the unauditable company. If they are not allowed to limit their liabilities in some way - for example through agreement with clients - they claim a situation will arise where auditing some companies will simply become so risky that no auditor will take them on.