The Financial Services Authority will not only lose bank supervision under the government’s shake-up of regulation, it is likely to lose its role monitoring listed companies. And the winner will be the Financial Reporting Council, making this little-known body the country’s most powerful corporate regulator.
(more…)

The accounting watchdog has ordered Ernst & Young to explain its role in how Lehman Brothers hid $50bn of debts, but the regulator has a conflict. It is trying to increase the choice of audit firms so cannot do anything that reduces the current Big Four to just three.
(more…)

Top of the in-tray for Lady Hogg, the new chairman of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), should be how to increase auditor choice. Four big accounting firms is not enough, even if another one does not disappear.
(more…)