According to a White House budget issued on February 10, 2020, the White House is considering transferring the authority of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB or Board) to the SEC by 2022 in order to eliminate duplication between the two regulators and to “reduce regulatory ambiguity.” See A Budget for America’s Future.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 established the PCAOB as a nonprofit corporation to oversee the audits of public companies in order to protect investors and the public interest by promoting informative, accurate, and independent audit reports. This was done in response to accounting scandals at major companies such as Enron and Worldcom. The SEC has oversight authority over the PCAOB, including the approval of the Board’s rules, standards, and budget. And, of course, the SEC has authority to broadly enforce the securities laws against, among others, auditors of public companies and registered broker-dealers. The PCAOB, however, rather than focusing on the entire range of securities law violations, typically focuses on violations of audit quality standards as embodied in its rules. For example, the PCAOB recently charged Pricewaterhouse Coopers’ Mexican affiliate firm with violating its Rule 3520, which requires a registered public accounting firm to be independent of the firm’s issuer audit clients. See In the Matter of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, S.A., PCAOB Release No. 105-2019-017 (Aug. 1, 2019). Moreover, many of the PCAOB staff members have public auditing experience, often with “Big Four” firms. Although the SEC also hires accountants, the agency would need to ramp up its hiring dramatically if it were to assume the PCAOB’s existing regulatory authority.
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