PCAOB chairman resigns
US audit watchdog chairman resigns to persue wider interests in corporate governance after just two years of service
The chairman of the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has
announced he is to resign on 30 November or ‘when a successor is in place’.
William J McDonough, chairman of the US audit watchdog said that he had
joined the PCAOB in June 2003 to help it fulfill the ‘great responsibilities‘
assigned to it by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to protect investors in US public
companies and by ‘overseeing the accounting firms that audit these companies’.
McDonough said that the PCAOB was now a ‘vibrant institution’ with an
‘outstanding board’ and a ‘superb, highly dedicated staff of almost 400 people’.
‘The supervisory process that we have adopted is working well, implemented by
the adoption of auditing standards that make sense and an inspection process
that helps auditors realise they must improve their practices to win back the
support of the public’, he said.
‘The firms know that public confidence is won most quickly and effectively
through their own efforts, helped and prodded when necessary by the PCAOB.
Productive working relationships are being established as well with a variety of
other countries for cooperation in dealing with overseas accounting firms
auditing non-US issuers of securities in American markets. I have full
confidence that the team of which I have felt honored to be part will rise to
ever greater heights.’
Regarding his future plans, McDonough added that he had a ‘wide range of
interests’ in corporate governance, finance and international affairs and that
he would explore ‘one or a variety of activities in those fields’.
Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said
that McDonough had done an ‘outstanding job’.
‘He has provided superb leadership at a critical time to our nation’s
investors, capital markets, and public companies, as well as the accounting
firms that audit them,’ he said.