Shanghai
China opens its books: US regulators have been allowed access to the Chinese audits of companies based in China and listed in the US for the first time, reducing the risk that around 200 Chinese companies would be forcibly delisted from US exchanges, says Stephen Foley in the Financial Times. Inspectors spent nine weeks in Hong Kong going over audits conducted by the Chinese affiliates of KPMG and PwC. Inspections within mainland China were not permitted.
For over a decade, the US government has accused China of shoddy auditing that had contributed to a series of accounting frauds in US-listed Chinese companies. It set up the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to inspect the accounting firms that audit US-listed firms regardless of where they are based. China had resisted inspections over fears the US would gain access to sensitive data, and Chinese tech giants Alibaba, and Baidu had been on course to delist by 2024. Erica Williams, chair of the PCAOB, stressed the work was still in the early
