PCAOB Strikes Deal with Taiwan

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) announced today that it had reached a cooperative agreement with the Financial Supervisory Commission of Taiwan, a deal which will allow the two countries to conduct joint inspections on auditors and audit firms that practice within both countries. Of the more than 900 PCAOB-registered audit firms operating outside the United States, 12 are located in Taiwan.

The PCAOB has been very active over the last few years in securing similar cooperative agreements across the world. The board has already penned deals with countries such as Switzerland, Israel, Norway and the U.K. and, according to Helen Munter, the board’s Director of Registration and Inspections, it has no intention of stopping there. During the FAE’s Securities and Exchange Commission conference on Oct. 4 (covered in more detail in this December’s Trusted Professional) she said that the PCAOB expects to increase the number of joint international audit inspections it conducts with the intention of working to better understand how multinational audits are performed.

The PCAOB has also been engaged in talks with securing a cooperative agreement with China, with Munter saying that forging such an accord is one of its highest priorities due to concerns about audit risk coming from PCAOB-registered countries located there. However, despite ongoing talks between the two countries, China remains reticent on such a deal due to concerns about what it might mean for Chinese sovereignty.