Big Four units of accounting firms face suspension

WASHINGTON: Chinese units of the global “Big Four” accounting firms should be suspended from practising in the United States for six months, a US judge ruled, in an escalation in a long-running dispute over regulators’ access to audit documents.

In a harshly worded 112-page ruling, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Administrative Law Judge Cameron Elliot censured the Chinese affiliates of KPMG, Deloitte & Touche, Pricewaterhouse-Coopers and Ernst and Young.