Board Releases Briefing Paper on Oversight of Non-U.S. Accounting Firms

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board today released a briefing paper that describes the broad parameters of the Board's approach to the oversight of non-U.S. accounting firms.

The briefing paper describes the Board’s plans for oversight of non-U.S. registered public accounting firms, based on cooperation with appropriate non-U.S. auditor oversight authorities. This cooperative approach would allow the Board to fulfill its responsibilities to protect the interests of investors and to further the public interest, in keeping with the statutory authority granted to the Board.

The plans described in the briefing paper include:

• A framework to permit varying degrees of reliance on a firm’s home country system of inspections, based on a sliding scale: the more independent and robust a home country system, the higher the reliance on that system. 
• A modification to the PCAOB’s registration form to permit, where applicable, the inclusion of certain information about a non-U.S. firm’s home country oversight system, in order to facilitate coordination between the PCAOB and non-U.S. oversight systems. 
• A 90-day extension of the Board’s deadline for non-U.S. firm registration in order to allow sufficient time for the Board to have final rules in place in this area, as well as permit non-U.S. firms a reasonable amount of time to understand and prepare for registration.

The full text of the briefing paper can be found under Rulemaking on the Board’s Web site, www.pcaobus.org.