Telecom audit split welcomed

By IRENE CHAPPLE

Telecom's decision to split its consulting and auditing work has been praised by the Institute of Finance Professionals, which says other corporates should follow suit.

Telecom will pull its multi-million dollar auditing account from PricewaterhouseCoopers after the annual report is complete. It will continue to use PricewaterhouseCoopers for its non-audit services, but has passed the auditing over to KPMG.

The move was in response to concerns over auditor independence, triggered by the wave of overseas accounting scandals. Executive director Paul Hosking said the move was welcome.

While no accounting irregularities have been found in New Zealand since the scandals broke, separation of audit and non-audit work in New Zealand was important to pre-empt any conflict, he said.

Hosking said the institute would make a submission on the Institute of Chartered Accountant's discussion paper on accounting standards, being released early next month.