Auditors Should be Allowed to Limit Liability by Agreement: Hamburg's Max Planck Institute Publishes Comments on EU Working Paper
23.03.2007
Statutory auditors are key players for international financial markets. Audit firms in the EU reported that they face a considerable number of high-value actual or potential claims arising from statutory audits, five of them are in excess of EUR 750 million (as of 31st October 2005). Consequently the EU Commission published a Commission staff working paper and invited comments on the question of how auditors can be protected from existence-threatening liability.Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg have published their comments on the proposals of the EU Commission: the audited company and the auditors should be given the opportunity to limit liability in individual cases to a reasonable amount. Investors and interested third parties can be better protected through judicial review of the liability level than by a single monetary cap throughout the EU.
Members of the Working Group: Walter Doralt, Alexander Hellgardt, Klaus J. Hopt, Patrick C. Leyens, Markus Roth and Reinhard Zimmermann
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Max Planck Institute Working Group Auditor’s Liability and its Impact on the European Financial Markets: Comments on the European Commission Staff Working Paper of 15 March 2007
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European Commission Staff Working Paper Auditor’s Liability and its Impact on the European Financial Markets, Brussels, 18 January 2007
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