The Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the UK’s accounting watchdog, is to be scrapped in favour of a stronger regulator with more power on investigating company directors (currently the FCR can only investigate them if they are also registered with an accounting body) and ability to issue harsher penalties including higher fines, and even prison terms.
According to the FRC review, commissioned by Business Secretary Greg Clark, last year the regulator was too slow to investigate misconduct, its sanctions too lenient and its board too close to the industry it supervised. Mr Clark said that “this new body will build on our status as a great place to do business and will form an important part of strengthened public trust in businesses and the regulations that govern them.”
The full article is available on Financial Times.