UK, US agree plan for audit inspections

Ever since Enron, the regulators' eyes have been trained on audit. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 created a new accounting regulator in the US with a mandate to inspect auditors anywhere in the world if they so much as breathed on the accounts of any company with securities listed on US capital market. Almost nine years on, the US and UK have struck a deal to share information. According to the UK's Financial Report Council, the authorities have signed an information sharing agreement aimed at increasing the level of cooperation on the oversight and inspection of audit firms. The protocol between the UK’s Professional Oversight Board and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board of the United States paves the way for joint work on inspections, including exchanges of information and interviewing firm personnel. Dame Barbara Mills, chair of the Professional Oversight Board, said: "This will both strengthen and streamline the process of audit market inspections, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the oversight regime." You can count on it!

Source document: The protocol is an eight-page pdf file.