Woolf: fair disclosure failures continue to haunt auditors

A lack of transparency in annual accounts leaves auditors under a continuing cloud six months after the Tesco accounting irregularities over supplier income reporting, says Emile Woolf FCA 

After six months the fallout from Tesco’s £263m half-year profit overstatement still reverberates. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) now expects companies to give full and fair disclosure of how they account for income in the areas that brought Tesco into disrepute.

Ocado is the first to report under the new regime, yet its accounts give no figures for commercial income from suppliers. Its auditors, PwC, are also Tesco’s. Oh, and Sainsbury’s.

And Morrisons, where they have now replaced KPMG, who appear to have missed the fact, as reported by its chairman in the latest notice of AGM, that dividends paid since 2012 unlawfully exceeded the company’s distributable profits by reference to its last filed accounts.

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