British American Tobacco has hired KPMG as its auditor after ending its 17-year relationship with PwC amid a dispute about environmental damages in the United States.
PwC officially resigned as BAT’s auditor yesterday after the tobacco company launched a legal action against it earlier this month over an unrelated dispute.
BAT is fighting a legal battle to avoid being dragged into the Fox River scandal in Wisconsin, where chemicals used in carbonless copy paper were pumped into the water in the 1960s. It may be liable for some of the estimated $1 billion environmental damage bill because of a business, Windward Prospects, that it bought 37 years ago.
Windward allegedly gave BAT Industries, a BAT subsidiary, an indemnity against claims relating to pollution of the