The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has launched an investigation into PwC’s audits of Intu Properties plc.
The FRC is investigating the firm’s audits of the consolidated financial statements of Intu for the years ended 31 December 2017 and 31 December 2018, which PwC says it will fully cooperate with.
The investigation will be conducted by the FRC’s Enforcement Division under the Audit Enforcement Procedure.
Shopping centre giant Intu, which had malls in Nottingham and Derby and directly employed circa 2,373 people, collapsed into administration in 2020.
At the time Jim Tucker, partner at KPMG and joint administrator, said: “intu owns many of the UK’s biggest and best-known shopping centres. The challenges affecting UK retail are well known and have been exacerbated by the impact of COVID-19 and the resulting lockdown. As today’s administration makes clear, those challenges have fed through to owners of retail property, even to owners of high-quality shopping centres such as intu’s.”
Intu had debts of £4.5bn when it collapsed.
