The Big Four firm has been banned by German regulators from tendering for any new audit business or taking on listed audit clients in Germany for two years as a sanction for audit failures and misconduct related to audits for Wirecard, which lasted for over a decade.

Wirecard, the German payments company, collapsed in 2020 after admitting that half of its revenue and €1.9bn (£1.6bn) in corporate cash did not exist.

EY, which had been the company’s auditor since 2007, had signed off the company’s accounts without flagging any serious problems for over a decade before its collapse.

Following an investigation, the German audit regulator Abschlussprüferaufsichtsstelle (APAS) fined EY €500,000 (£436,913) while five current and former auditors were given individual fines ranging from €23,000 (£20,087) to €300,000 (£262,008).

The acc