UHY Hacker Young fined over audit family tie

UHY HACKER YOUNG has agreed to pay a £16,650 regulatory fine imposed by the ICAEW’s audit registration committee.

The penalty was imposed after the firm’s admitted breach of an audit regulation where it ‘failed to eliminate a potential threat to its independence due to an immediate family member of a person in a position to influence the conduct and outcome of the audit being employed by the audited entity’.

UHY Hacker Young is 16th in Accountancy Age‘s Top 50+50 table, with £50m of fee income.

Also in the latest round of disciplinary procedures announced by the institute, Stephen Mark Katz of Finchley, London, agreed to comply with an order from the ICAEW’s investigation committee that he be fined £2,650 and pay costs of £3,021.

It relates to his failure to comply with elements of the institution’s code of ethics between 1 September 2009 and 30 November 2012, when Katz – through his firm ‘X LLP’ – paid £132,000 to ‘Y Limited’ for marketing costs, when the payments were actually made in return for the introduction of insolvency appointments to Katz.