London: Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is being investigated over its auditing of Barclays Capital Securities in relation to the investment bank’s compliance with rules governing the protection of client money.
Photo: Bloomberg
The reports related to Barclays Capital’s compliance with client asset rules between 2001 and 2009, the AADB said.
In January, the FSA fined Barclays Capital £1.1 million for mingling client money held in sterling money market deposits with the its own funds for 5-7 hours each trading day in that eight-year period. The amount of client money that was mixed grew to £387 million in 2009 from £6 million in 2002, the FSA said at the time.
“We will cooperate fully with the AADB investigation, and we will be defending our work vigorously,” said a PwC spokesman.
The Financial Reporting Council, of which the AADB is a part, is also looking into Deloitte’s auditing of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Last year, the FRC asked Ernst & Young, another of the so-called “Big Four” auditors, to explain its auditing of investment bank Lehman Brothers before it went bust in 2008.
