Limiting Audit Firms' Liability: A Step in the Right Direction? (Proposals for a New Audit Liability Regime Revisited)

Abstract

This paper considers the responses of six audit firms, to the four options presented by the European Commission in reforming auditors’ liability. Whilst agreeing with a limitation in audit firms’ liability, it does not consider the means of limitation, as provided by the European Commission in its Recommendation, to be the best means of limiting auditors’ liability. In proposing a means whereby not only a limitation of audit firms’ liability can be achieved, but also one which would serve as a better means of facilitating harmonisation, the paper makes reference to the variants presented in the author’s paper “Proposals For a New Audit Liability Regime”, namely a combination of the first and third options. Further, the wide scope permitted by the Commission in leaving it to Member States to decide upon the appropriate method for limiting liability and the means of limiting liability, as the paper will seek to illustrate, do not present the best opportunities in realising the goal of harmonisation.