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

¹ If an in­di­vidu­al or an audit firm car­ries out the tasks of aud­it­ors, the pro­vi­sions of this Act ap­ply as soon as the new pro­vi­sions on aud­it­ors of 16 Decem­ber 2005 be­come ap­plic­able to the leg­al en­tity to be audited.

² If in­di­vidu­als or audit firms provide oth­er audit ser­vices, the new law shall ap­ply from the mo­ment this Act comes in­to force.

³ In­di­vidu­als and audit firms that sub­mit an ap­plic­a­tion to be li­censed as an aud­it­or, audit ex­pert or audit firm un­der state over­sight to the Over­sight Au­thor­ity with­in four months fol­low­ing the com­mence­ment of this Act may provide audit ser­vices in the sense of Art­icle 2 let­ter a un­til the de­cision on the li­cence is taken. The Over­sight Au­thor­ity shall con­firm timely re­ceipt of the ap­plic­a­tion to the ap­plic­ant in writ­ing. It shall no­ti­fy the stock ex­change of ap­plic­a­tions that are sub­mit­ted for li­cens­ing as an audit firm un­der state over­sight.

⁴ Pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­i­ence that has been ac­quired up to two years fol­low­ing the com­mence­ment of this Act un­der the over­sight of per­sons who sat­is­fy the re­quire­ments in ac­cord­ance with the Or­din­ance of 15 June 1992⁹⁵ on the pro­fes­sion­al re­quire­ments for spe­cially qual­i­fied aud­it­ors shall be re­garded as pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­i­ence in the sense of Art­icle 4.

⁵ Pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­i­ence that has been ac­quired up to two years fol­low­ing the com­mence­ment of this Act un­der the over­sight of per­sons who sat­is­fy the re­quire­ments re­lat­ing to edu­ca­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 4 para­graph 2 shall be re­garded as pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­i­ence in the sense of Art­icle 5.

⁶ In cases of hard­ship, the Over­sight Au­thor­ity may also re­cog­nise pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­i­ence that does not meet the stat­utory re­quire­ments, provided that it can be demon­strated, on the basis of many years of prac­tic­al ex­per­i­ence, that audit ser­vices are provided fault­lessly.