Changing of the audit guard at G4S

PwC HAS SECURED the lucrative audit account of troubled security group G4S.

The account, worth £7m in 2013, has been wrested from KPMG.

The G4S board announced the move to the stock exchange on Friday. PwC will formally take over as the group’s auditor for the year ending 31 December 2015.

The security firm that bungled the London Olympics Games security contract first announced its intention to change auditor in its 2013 annual report & accounts, published in April 2014. The appointment of PwC will be recommended to shareholders for approval at the 2015 AGM.

Last week, G4S suffered a sharp drop in its share price after a fake website purporting to be the beleaguered outfit claimed it had overstated its profits by £400m.

The scandal-hit firm – whose reputation was already damaged after it agreed to hand back £108.9m plus tax to the British government after it was rumbled for massively overcharging the taxpayer on contracts to tag offenders – saw its shares plunge by 3.5% to 266p before making a slight recovery.

A fake press release was sent out in an email linked to the sham website, which claimed that G4S had been forced to restate its profits and that it had sacked its CFO Himanshu Raja.

The rogue site was spotted within an hour of going live and was quickly taken down.

KPMG won the audit account of AIM-listed natural resources company Rose Petroleum from Baker Tilly, who held it for 10 years.