Adrienne Klasa
UK regulators have begun investigating accounting firm Mazars over its audit of retailer French Connection’s full-year financial results.
The investigation, which was decided at a July meeting of the UK’s Financial Reporting Council and launched on Wednesday, will probe French Connection’s financial statements for the year ending January 31 2020. Mazars, a midsized audit firm founded in Rouen, said in a statement that it was co-operating with the investigation.
The fashion brand said that it had agreed a deal to sell itself for £29m on Monday to a consortium led by UK apparel entrepreneurs Apinder Singh Ghura and Amarjit Singh Grewal, capping years of losses exacerbated by the pandemic. The 30p per share offer represented a 30 per cent premium on its stock price when it was first announced in September.
French Connection’s share price jumped around 5 per cent following the deal announcement, and has gained 187 per cent this year.
The fashion group had dropped KPMG as its auditor and replaced it with Mazars in April 2019. The results under investigation would have been Mazars’ first time overseeing French Connections’ full-year results.
Source: Finacial Times