Ventas, a real-estate investment trust based in Chicago, has fired the Big 4 accounting firm EY and its own chief accounting officer and controller after the discovery of an “inappropriate personal relationship” between the two cast suspicion upon two years of audit work.
Ventas has hired KPMG to re-audit its financial statements for 2012 and 2013 and review of its results for the first quarter of 2014. That move came after EY informed Ventas it was no longer independent and was withdrawing its audit opinions for those periods due to the uncovered srelationship. In the company’s 8-K filing to announce the change in audit firm, Ventas says EY told the company that it was obligated under professional standards to withdraw its opinions and that its withdrawal was based solely on the inappropriate relationship, not because of any accounting issue, control concerns, or any other reason.
