Corporate Governance

CII Supports PCAOB?s Concept of Audit Partner?s Signature

By Fei-Lu Qian

In response to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board?s (?PCAOB?) request for public comments on its proposal requiring the engagement partner of an auditing firm with final responsibility for the audit to sign the audit report, the Council of Institutional Investors (?CII?) submitted its comments to the PCAOB in support of the proposal. Specifically, the CII believes that requiring ?the engagement partner to sign the audit report will enhance audit quality and investor protection by strengthening auditor accountability and improving the transparency of the audit process.? The CII notes that ?the engagement partner plays a unique role in the audit? which ?includes responsibility for planning the audit, supervising engagement team members, and determining whether the financial statements taken as a whole are fairly stated.?

The CII support of the proposal is consistent with the PCAOB?s purposes of the idea which are to ?increase the engagement partner?s sense of accountability? and ?increase transparency about who is responsible for performing the audit, which could provide useful information to investors and, in turn, provide an additional incentive to firms to improve the quality of all of their engagement partners.?

Full post as published by PomTalk on September 16, 2009 (boomark / email).