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in the mutual fund sector, the wave of dismissals from the world-renowned accounting firm pricewaterhousecoopers is still spreading. recently, several fund companies have announced that some of their products will change their accounting firms from pricewaterhousecoopers to other institutions.

several fund companies have dismissed pwc

on september 5, e fund management announced that the accounting firm of its e fund henggu 18-month closed-end bond fund was changed from pricewaterhousecoopers zhongtian to ernst & young huaming on september 3. regarding the above changes, e fund management stated that the company's board of directors had reviewed and approved them, and the fund custodian had been notified in accordance with relevant regulations and the fund contract.

in addition to e fund, several other fund companies have recently issued similar announcements.

according to an announcement made by tianhong fund on september 3, starting from september 2, the accounting firms for hundreds of its funds were replaced at the same time, with some being replaced from pricewaterhousecoopers to kpmg huazhen and others being replaced from pricewaterhousecoopers to ey huaming.

on september 2, tianhong fund also issued a separate announcement, announcing that tianhong sse 50 etf had dismissed the original accounting firm pricewaterhousecoopers and appointed ernst & young huaming to be responsible for the capital verification of the raised funds and kpmg huazhen to be responsible for the fund's property audit.

also on september 2, caitong asset management announced that it would replace the accounting firm of caitong asset management csi nonferrous metals index with ernst & young hua ming from pricewaterhousecoopers. according to yinhua fund’s announcement on the same day, yinhua csi r&d innovation 100 etf would also replace its accounting firm with ernst & young hua ming from pricewaterhousecoopers.

in addition, hengyue quality life hybrid fund terminated its contract with pricewaterhousecoopers and replaced it with ernst & young hua ming on september 1. huatai-pinebridge, southern, invesco great wall fund and other fund companies also announced in the past half month that some of their products terminated their contracts with pricewaterhousecoopers and replaced them with ernst & young hua ming or deloitte touche tohmatsu as accounting firms.

as early as july and august this year, there were signs that the dismissal storm suffered by pwc had spread to the fund industry. at that time, some funds under hongtu innovation, csop and baoying successively terminated their contracts with pwc.

as for the reason for the dismissal, an industry insider said, "generally speaking, fund companies may change accounting firms regularly based on audit fees, service years, independence requirements and other factors. re-hiring is not uncommon, but it is not frequent. as we all know, pwc is experiencing a crisis of trust due to its involvement in financial fraud by well-known real estate companies. the fund company's replacement of pwc with other accounting firms is not unrelated to pwc's credibility crisis."

"according to relevant regulatory requirements, only accounting firms that are qualified to engage in securities business can audit the annual reports of public funds. currently, the industry is worried that they face the risk of suspension of qualifications. therefore, at a recent board meeting, they reviewed and approved the proposal to change the accounting firm in advance to avoid possible risks in the future." another fund company person also said.

industry insiders predict that more fund companies may terminate their contracts with pwc in the future, especially those companies whose contracts with the audit service agencies for their products have expired, which may take the lead.

wind data shows that among the 12,132 public funds on the market (only the main code is counted), 5,246 funds are audited by pricewaterhousecoopers, accounting for 43%, far ahead of all 24 accounting firms that serve as auditing agencies.

lost big financial orders one after another

pricewaterhousecoopers, which is caught in the vortex of "dismissal", continues to lose large financial orders. in addition to public funds, insurance companies, banks and other financial institutions have also terminated their contracts with it in batches.

in march this year, the china securities regulatory commission concluded an investigation into evergrande real estate for suspected illegal disclosure of bond information. at the end of may, the regulatory agency imposed penalties on evergrande real estate. pricewaterhousecoopers, evergrande's auditing agency since its listing in 2009, fell into a crisis of trust due to the evergrande real estate audit case.

affected by this, many financial institutions have cancelled their cooperation with pwc. as for insurance, listed insurance companies such as china taiping, picc, and china life have successively announced the dismissal of pwc; non-listed insurance companies such as china post insurance, caixin jixiang life, three gorges life, fosun pramerica life, and fosun united health have also announced their "parting ways" with pwc.

looking at the a-share listed banks, many banks including china merchants bank, ningbo bank, hangzhou bank and suzhou bank have successively announced the cancellation of their employment with pricewaterhousecoopers.

recently, there are rumors that the regulatory investigation results on pricewaterhousecoopers will soon be released due to its involvement in evergrande's financial fraud incident. pricewaterhousecoopers will face a fine of up to 500 million yuan and a suspension of its mainland business for 6 months. at present, the above rumors have not been confirmed.

but after that, another wave of layoffs came.

on august 15, taiping reinsurance issued an announcement stating that the company plans to change its accounting firm, dismiss pricewaterhousecoopers, and appoint kpmg huazhen as its external auditing agency.

on august 19, bank of china issued an announcement stating that it plans to hire ey hua ming and ey as domestic and international auditors respectively for 2024, replacing the originally appointed pricewaterhousecoopers and pricewaterhousecoopers.

on the evening of august 29, china minsheng bank announced that the company plans to dismiss pricewaterhousecoopers as its 2024 audit accounting firm.

it is worth mentioning that after pricewaterhousecoopers lost a series of major financial institution clients, competitors such as ernst & young, deloitte and kpmg took over these large orders, and ernst & young became the biggest winner. according to incomplete statistics, the accounting firm newly hired by many financial institutions is ernst & young.