Abstract
The spate of corporate failures around the world, such as Enron, WorldCom, AIG and more recently Patisserie Valerie and Steinhoff has attracted considerable attention from corporate regulators and professional bodies. One of the many victims of these failures has been the reputation of audit firms, the audit process and the accounting profession in general. Audit failures are the product of the values governing auditing firms. Good audit firm governance is a way in which the audit firms can maintain the public trust in their brands by being seen as exemplars of best practice governance. In South Africa during 2018, the IRBA issued a call to audit firms to introduce the public reporting of relevant internal information in the form of a transparency report. This provides the public with limited information on the governance practice at the auditing firm. Board composition is arguably one of the most critical components of a corporation’s governance, and King IV also recommends disclosure with regards to the board composition. A content analysis was performed to analyse the disclosure on the oversight board and its composition of the big four audit firms in South Africa. From the findings it is evident that not all audit firms have an oversight board, and it can be argued that the corporate structures of the audit firms are flawed.