In 2018, the regulator banned Price Waterhouse for two years from auditing any listed firm for its role in the Satyam Computer Services scam. However, the audit firm had successfully challenged the same in the Securities Appellate Tribunal and got the order quashed.
“Our position is very simple — if they’re auditing listed companies based on which investors are investing, and if we find that that work has not been done properly and in investors’ interest, some audit firms should not be allowed to audit for sometime of the listed companies,” Tyagi said at an event here.
“It is not our case that Sebi is the agency which registers or regulates the auditors. It is nothing like that… We are not de-registering auditors. We don’t have the authority and we don’t wish to have that authority,” he said.
He also made it clear that Sebi’s expectation is that faulty audits should not lead to inflated profits or dividends.
The regulator has given its wish-list for the budget to the finance ministry, includes ways to increase the activities in the corporate bond market, he said.