China Cinda Asset Management (1359) is to replace PricewaterhouseCoopers with Ernst & Young as its auditor amid reports that PwC is facing a record fine for overlooking misconduct at embattled China Evergrande (3333).
Bloomberg last week reported that the Ministry of Finance set to announce a fine which could be at least 1 billion yuan (HK$1.07 billion).
PwC has been in the spotlight since China's regulator earlier this year found Evergrande, once the country's biggest developer, had overstated revenue at its main unit Hengda by 564 billion yuan in the two years through 2020.
Since then, several large Chinese firms have replaced PwC as their auditors, including China Taiping Insurance (0966), China Railway Group (0390), and PetroChina (0857).
On Friday, China's regulator fined Hengda 4.18 billion yuan for fraudulent bond issuances and illegal information disclosures. As one of China's major bad debt managers, Cinda was also fined 7.35 million yuan by the National Financial Regulatory Administration for inaccurate statistical data on the real estate industry and other risky operations.
