The Big Four global auditing firms have vowed to appeal a decision by a US Securities and Exchange Commission judge to ban their Chinese joint ventures from working for any US-listed Chinese companies.
SEC administrative trial judge Cameron Eliot ruled late on Wednesday that all four joint ventures – Ernst & Young Hua Ming, KPMG Huazhen, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, and PwC Zhong Tian – had violated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and said they should be barred from practising in the US for six months.
The SEC ruling is the latest twist in a long-running battle between US and Chinese regulators over access to company documents of Chinese companies listed in New York.