The European Commission is preparing hard regulations for the large auditing and consulting companies

According to the legislative project, which will be presented in November, the companies with assets over one billion euro will be required to hire two audit firms for the financial statements, of which at least one, outside the group of the four largest players in this market, namely Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and KPMG.

Also an audit firm will be able to work for a company with assets of over one billion euro for up to nine years, so the imposed rotation having the purpose to strengthen the independence and the competition in this branch.

In Romania there are companies with over one billion euro most of which are state or foreign ownership.

The new regulations would target large state companies such as: Hidroelectrica, Nuclearelectrica or CEC Bank as well as private companies with Romanian shareholders like Transilvania Bank.

Among companies with foreign shareholders would be included banks such as:  Romanian Commercial Bank, BRD Goup Societe Generale, Alpha Bank, UniCredit, Bancpost or ING Bank and large oil companies like: Petrom, Rompetrol