The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is working on a new idea for how to get investors what they want, the name of the engagement partner on each public company audit, by requiring audit firms to submit a brand new form specifically for that purpose.
The board has indicated in an updated standard-setting agenda that its staff is drafting for the board’s consideration “a supplemental request for comment” that would reflect comments received earlier this year on a December 2013 proposal to elicit more transparency over exactly who is working behind the curtain in each public company audit engagement. That proposal was already a second try for a new rule, and it was issued by a sharply divided board, with member Jeannette Franzel questioning the basis for the project and Jay Hanson wondering aloud what more the board might learn from a fresh round of comments on essentially the same proposal.
