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PwC earlier this month endorsed Toshiba's annual financial
report with a "qualified opinion". But it also issued a
separate, "adverse opinion" on corporate governance, saying
Toshiba was late in booking losses at its U.S. nuclear power
subsidiary Westinghouse.
The auditor's rare, two-part verdict came at a sensitive time
for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. While Abe has backed calls for
more stringent corporate governance and accounting, analysts
said a high-profile bankruptcy or delisting could have hurt a
government already struggling with low approval ratings.
"There was none whatsoever," Koichiro Kimura, CEO of PwC Aarata,
told Reuters in a phone interview when asked about political
pressure. PwC replaced Ernst & Young ShinNihon as Toshiba's
auditor after the laptops-to-nuclear conglomerate admitted in
2015 to inflating profits for years.
In Toshiba's annual report filed earlier this month, PwC said it
believed that Westinghouse losses, booked in the year through
March 2017, should have been recorded in the previous year -- an
opinion Toshiba said it disagreed with.
If the losses were booked in line with PwC's opinion, last year
would have been Toshiba's second year of negative worth, in
which liabilities exceed assets. Back-to-back years of negative
worth is grounds for delisting.
(Reporting by Takahiko Wada, editing by Louise Heavens)
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