AND regrets to announce that in spite of extensive efforts it has been unable to find a PIE/OOB-licensed auditor for the audit of its 2019 Consolidated Financial Statements.
As announced previously in the mid-year trading update of 12 September 2019, the Company’s former auditor, Grant Thornton Accountants en Adviseurs B.V., chose to surrender its PIE/OOB-license in 2019. As a result, AND was forced to engage all (six) remaining PIE/OOB-licensed audit firms.
One of these six audit firms still is -as predecessor of Grant Thornton as auditor of AND- in its so-called “cooling off”-period, and as such not legally allowed to service AND as auditor.
The other (five) audit firms all have decided not to offer their services to AND, primarily for (a combination of) reasons of limited staff capacity, commercial considerations and significance of the anticipated audit fee relative to the (limited) size of AND.
Unfortunately, AND will therefore publish its 2019 Consolidated Financial Statements without an auditor’s opinion.
AND regrets this outcome, and wants to stress that the considerations for aforementioned audit firms not to service AND are outside the sphere of influence of the company, and find its origin in the strict application of the applicable legislation for PIEs/OOBs, as well as in the apparent scarce resources with PIE/OOB-licensed audit firms.
Furthermore, the company wishes to stress that it has been in transparent communication with AFM, Euronext and auditors association NBA throughout this process, starting June 2019.
Publication of the 2019 consolidated financial statements is scheduled for 24 April 2020. The Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of the company will be held on 19 May 2020.
A detailed convocation for this Meeting will be issued in due course.
Meanwhile, AND continues to do its utmost to secure a PIE/OOB-licensed auditor for fiscal year 2020.