PwC lost five Chinese clients in May, adding to a list of more than a dozen firms its stopped auditing in the country in the last two years, after it came under intense scrutiny into trouble being the auditor of China Evergrande.
China Taiping Insurance Holdings said it appointed KPMG as its auditor for 2024 after PwC retired, just as China Merchants Bank replaced it with Ernst & Young. China Railway Group, China Electronics Huada Technology and People’s Insurance Company (Group) of China are among the others that changed auditors.
Those Chinese companies contributed to at least 150 million yuan in fees, based on their annual filings. In addition, Eastroc Beverage canceled a shareholder vote that would have reappointed the firm as its auditor.
Authorities said Evergrande’s main onshore unit, Hengda, overstated its revenue by 564 billion yuan in the two years through 2020. Chinese government authorities are probing PwC’s involvement as a former auditor for the real estate giant, people familiar with the matter said in March.
