According to the Guardian, the UK office of the audit network KPMG has been fined £13m for the fact that the sale of its client (bedmaker Silentnight) ‘pushed’ it into insolvency, so the private investment group HIG was able to profitably buy the company in 2011.
According to an independent review, KPMG’s partners persuaded Silentnight’s management to declare insolvency, which led HIG to buy out KPMG’s client from the interim administration and, most importantly, avoid the need to make payments to Silentnight’s large pension scheme for 1,200 staff.
When this became known, the state Pension Protection Fund (PPF) demanded the KPMG’s fine to be used to pay Silentnight pension holders from among employees who had been without their funds during all 10 years of investigation.
KPMG’s penalty is indeed large, but still did not reach the record: the upper limit is still held by last year’s decision of the financial regulator FRC, which fined Deloitte £15m in the case of its auditing of the software company Autonomy.