New York (April 21, 2003) - The Big Four have petitioned the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to pare down the oversight body’s required disclosures in order to audit publicly traded companies.
In a series of comment letters, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young and KPMG, expressed concern regarding the board’s requirement to register all of the firm’s accountants with the PCAOB as well as list all legal proceedings against the firms over the last 10 years.
"We believe it is obvious that obtaining and reporting information concerning tens of thousands of individuals would be an overwhelmingly burdensome task," Deloitte & Touche wrote. “We question both the relevance of much of this information to the board’s task as well as the use that the board will be able to make of much of the voluminous data.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers, meanwhile, complained that gathering the necessary data “would be a tremendous burden and would not be possible in many cases.”
-- WebCPA staff
