{"id":42177,"date":"2018-06-13T09:01:12","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T08:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=42177"},"modified":"2018-06-13T09:01:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T08:01:12","slug":"the-15-year-ban-for-the-auditor-who-signed-bhs-accounts-is-a-move-in-the-right-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/06\/13\/the-15-year-ban-for-the-auditor-who-signed-bhs-accounts-is-a-move-in-the-right-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"The 15 year ban for the auditor who signed BHS accounts is a move in the right direction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2018\/jun\/12\/senior-pwc-auditor-of-bhs-accounts-faces-15-year-ban-and-hefty-fine?utm_source=esp&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;utm_campaign=Business+Today&amp;utm_term=277896&amp;subid=280978&amp;CMP=business_today\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Guardian has reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The senior\u00a0<a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/pricewaterhousecoopers\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">PricewaterhouseCoopers<\/a>\u00a0accountant who audited\u00a0<a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/bhs\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">BHS<\/a>\u2019s accounts ahead of its sale for \u00a31 just a year before the department store chain collapsed is facing a 15-year ban and six-figure fine from the industry watchdog.<\/p>\n<p>Steve Denison, who spent more than 30 years at PwC according to his LinkedIn profile, becoming a partner, is understood to have been facing a \u00a3500,000 fine from the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), reduced to \u00a3325,000 after he agreed to cooperate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let's leave aside the appropriateness of the penalty: that appears to require no further discussion.<\/p>\n<p>What is worth noting is the 15-year ban. For all practical\u00a0purposes, this is a life sentence: no one will ever go back to auditing after fifteen years.<\/p>\n<p>And apparently this person has now left PWC.<\/p>\n<p>This is the sort of sanction that works. \u00a3325,000 is less than a year's net pay for this person. Painful, but still leaving what many would think a dream like sum to live on. But a life ban on earning that income sends out a very powerful message indeed.<\/p>\n<p>More such sanctions are required.<\/p>\n<p>Ideally backed by action from the person's professional institute as well. If this is not bringing the profession into disrepute I am not sure what is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Guardian has reported: The senior\u00a0PricewaterhouseCoopers\u00a0accountant who audited\u00a0BHS\u2019s accounts ahead of its sale for \u00a31 just a year before the department store chain collapsed is<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/06\/13\/the-15-year-ban-for-the-auditor-who-signed-bhs-accounts-is-a-move-in-the-right-direction\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,26,81,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountancy","category-accounting","category-auditing","category-pwc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}