UK: Professional Oversight Board report

The Professional Oversight Board (POB) has published its report to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills for the year to 31 March 2009. The POB chairman, Dame Barbara Mills DBE QC, notes in her foreword:

Overall, our work in 2008/09 continues to support the view that the quality of auditing in the UK is fundamentally sound and that the firms have generally made good progress in implementing prior year recommendations. The economic downturn has given rise to increased challenges to auditors and we report on the emerging findings from this work in Section Five, though the full results and the public reports on each firm will be published towards the end of this year.

Our assessment of the actions taken by the major audit firms at a firm-wide level since late 2007 to respond to increasing turmoil in financial markets and the onset of the economic downturn is generally positive. However, we have noted variations in the extent to which audit procedures have been enhanced in practice, both between firms and between individual audit teams, though any issues are only likely to emerge from our 2009/10 inspection cycle".