Companies / Financial Services Barclays decision threatens KPMG SA The bank’s board says it wants to ditch the auditors, who will lose R138m in annual fees BL PREMIUM

KPMG is on the ropes. The auditing firm lost its biggest private sector client yet on Thursday — and with it about R138m in annual audit fees. The more than 200 employees who worked on the Barclays Africa account face losing their jobs after the bank’s board decided to ditch it as an external auditor. Barclays Africa shareholders will vote on the recommendation later in May. It comes weeks after VBS Mutual Bank was added to the list of KPMG’s audit failures. The move threatens the future of KPMG SA, which has already lost several private- sector clients and can no longer do work for the government after the auditor-general dropped it in April. It is also the latest blow to the audit profession, which is facing a growing number of investigations in SA and globally. The Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors, which fined PwC in 2017 over its audit of South African Airways, is investigating Deloitte’s audit of Steinhoff and KPMG’s work for Gupta-family companies, the South African R...