In the wake of Deloitte & Touche’s decision to withdraw as auditor for Huntingdon Life Sciences, the company is weighing how best to comply with legal requirements for auditing while at the same time sparing auditing companies from harassment by animal rights extremists.
Accountancy Age reports that one solution it is considering would be to hire a firm to audit the company for a single year only. Accountancy Age quotes a spokesman for the company as saying,
From a legislative point of view, we don’t necessarily have to make public who is working on our audit until after the work is completed. That firm may not actually be working for us by the time the information is published
One would assume, however, that Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty would simply refocus its campaign in that case on punishing the previous year’s auditors in order to deter future auditors from wanting to take on HLS’ accounts.
HLS could potentially lose its OTC stock listing in the United States if it is unable to find an auditor.
Source:
HLS seeks hit-and-run audit results. Paul Grant, Accountancy Age, April 24, 2003.