China Herald: China might ban Hong Kong audits

Many of the audits, even of State-Owned companies, are signed off by the Hong Kong offices of the larger accounting firms. China might now ban this practice, where mainland auditing teams would anyway do most of the work, writes accounting expert Paul Gillis at his weblog.

Paul Gillis:

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) has two articles today that say that Chinese regulators are cracking down on Hong Kong firms coming into China to do audits. According to the SCMP, the proposal will require firms to use their mainland affiliates to staff engagements.

Prior to this proposal, it was possible for an overseas firm to obtain atemporary audit practice certificate to come to the mainland to audit a specific company. The process was cumbersome and often ignored.

Now the mainland affiliate will have to supply the staff for the audit. I believe that was already the case in most Big Four audits. But the rule, if implemented, will highlight the principal auditor issue that I raised on Alibabalast week. Based on Alibaba’s risk disclosures, it appears that the PwC was using mainland staff for a significant part of the audit. This proposed rule will simply make sure they do that, and will likely mean that PwC Zhong Tian instead of PwC Hong Kong signs the audit report.

As the SCMP articles explain, the practice of Hong Kong firms signing mainland audit reports is institutionalized in Hong Kong, and the loss of this franchise will hurt the Hong Kong profession. I observe that all large SOE audits are signed by the Hong Kong member firm of the Big Four, even though I believe that all of them are actually audited by mainland staff.

Mainland CPA firms have been allowed to sign H-shares in Hong Kong for several years, but all Red Chips are required to have Hong Kong auditors. The proposed rules may force a change for Red Chips as well as private companies like Tencent.

More at the ChinaAccountingBlog.

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