FIRM BEHIND OSCARS MIXUP FINED A RECORD £5.1m

SCANDAL-HIT accountant PwC has been fined a record £5.1m for mistakes when it reviewed the books of a collapsed finance adviser.

RSM Tenon went bust in 2011 and it emerged soon after that there were ‘significant errors’ in its accounts.

As its auditor, global business PwC was supposed to pick up mistakes and ensure investors were not misled.

But yesterday, the Financial Reporting Council watchdog said PwC was guilty of ‘failures to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence and failures to exercise sufficient profes- sional scepticism’. PwC was ordered to pay £500,000 of costs, and partner Nicholas Boden was fined £114,750.

It is the latest in a long line of controversies for the accounting industry, which has repeatedly been criticised for lacking transparency and tolerating incompetent staff.

PwC accountants were responsible for this year’s Oscars mix-up, when they gave presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong envelope and the incorrect film was named Best Picture winner.

Its revenues last year were £3.4bn.

PwC missed an error which saw Tesco overstate its profits by £326m ■ It failed to spot a £530m fraud at the Italian branch of BT ■ Its office in Ukraine has been banned from conducting formal bank audits after giving a clean bill of health to a...