Tuesday 18 September 2012

UK: auditor clauses in debt contracts

The Competition Commission, as part of its statutory audit services market investigation, has published a report it commissioned regarding auditor clauses in debt contracts: see here (pdf). The authors report on research from the US and UK with regard to the use of clauses in loan agreements regarding the identity of the borrower's auditor and highlight questions for further investigation. One such question, with regard to the UK, concerns the reasons for the absence of auditor clauses in many contracts: is this explained by the expectation that large listed firms would already have one of the large audit firms?

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