Federal Act
on the Licensing and Oversight
of Auditors
(Auditor Oversight Act, AOA)

¹ In ad­di­tion to the gen­er­al stat­utory pro­vi­sions on the in­de­pend­ence of aud­it­ors (Art­icle 728 CO²⁶), audit firms un­der state over­sight must ob­serve the fol­low­ing prin­ciples when provid­ing audit ser­vices to pub­lic in­terest en­tit­ies:

a.

The an­nu­al fees arising from audit­ing and oth­er ser­vices provided for a single com­pany and the com­pan­ies af­fil­i­ated to it as a res­ult of uni­fied man­age­ment (group) must not ex­ceed 10 per­cent of the audit firm’s total fees.

b.

If per­sons who held a de­cision-mak­ing or seni­or ac­count­ing po­s­i­tion at a com­pany trans­fer to an audit firm and take up a seni­or po­s­i­tion there, this audit firm may not provide any audit ser­vices to the com­pany con­cerned for two years from the time of the trans­fer.

c.

If per­sons who have been in­volved in the ac­count­ing at a com­pany trans­fer to an audit firm, they may not take charge of any audit ser­vices for this com­pany for two years from the time of the trans­fer.

² A pub­lic in­terest en­tity may not em­ploy any per­sons who have been in charge of audit ser­vices for this com­pany or have held a de­cision-mak­ing po­s­i­tion at the audit firm con­cerned over the two pre­ced­ing years.