Following the ouster of Erica Williams as chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has designated board member George Botic to serve as acting chair, effective July 23, 2025.
Williams’ last day was July 22. As part of its oversight activities, the SEC appoints and removes board members and approves the PCAOB’s standards as well as yearly budgets.
Botic has been with the PCAOB since 2003, becoming the director of the PCAOB’s Division of Registration and Inspections (DRI) in 2018 before being appointed as a board member in 2023. His current term runs until October 2028.
While many had expected PCAOB member Christina Ho to be the interim chair because of her criticisms of the board under the leadership of Williams, the choice of Botic was not entirely unexpected.
He is not only a long-term PCAOB official but also a CPA who worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a senior manager before becoming a regulator.
Moreover, Botic worked closely with former chairs James Doty and William Duhnke. Then-SEC Chair Mary Schapiro, an appointee of President Obama, tapped Doty to run the PCAOB while Jay Clayton, President Trump’s appointee as SEC chief during his first term, tapped Duhnke to head up the PCAOB.
Botic was an adviser to Doty, and Duhnke named Botic to run DRI. Gensler made Botic a PCAOB member.
Richard Chambers, senior adviser for risk and audit at AuditBoard, said that it is not surprising that SEC Chair Paul Atkins pushed Williams out as recent history shows. Trump named Atkins to head up the commission.
“To me, that was almost inevitable,” Chambers said.
Clayton did not reappoint Doty as chair but instead appointed Duhnke. Then SEC chief Gary Gensler fired Duhnke and appointed Williams to run the PCAOB. Gensler and Williams both pursued expansive and aggressive regulatory and enforcement agendas, which created a lot of criticism and opposition in the industry, during the Biden era.
SEC Chair Atkins is expected to pursue a more moderate regulatory agenda, putting a bigger emphasis on capital formation than Gensler did. He is also likely to seek a more measured PCAOB.
There has been a “quadrennial shift of PCAOB leadership to mirror the regulatory philosophy of the SEC chair, which ultimately mirrors the regulatory philosophy of the White House,” said Chambers who previously served as president and chief executive officer of the Institute of Internal Auditors.
At this juncture, he said that the SEC has put in place an interim chief just to make sure there’s someone at the PCAOB to continue carrying out its mission.
“I would be surprised during the interim… that there would be much in the way of new initiatives, or progress on any pending initiatives,” Chambers said. Botic would be “the caretaker, and what we have to be looking for is the smoke coming out of the chimney at the SEC indicating that they’ve made a decision on a permanent chair.”
Moreover, Chambers said that the two other board members, Kara Stein and Anthony Thompson who have reliably voted with Williams, might be replaced down the road.
He also speculated that Ho could still be named the permanent chair.
In the meantime, Democratic SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw said in a July 22 statement that she was “disheartened last week to read of her [Williams’] compelled resignation.”
Crenshaw said that she is grateful for Williams’ “exemplary service and stewardship of the PCAOB.”
The commissioner said that during Williams’ tenure, the PCAOB “has updated, refined and modernized auditing standards and rules, and improved overall audit quality; sharpened the inspections program and helped reduce deficiencies across audit firms; and, effectively held wrongdoers to account, helping to deter future bad actors and making our markets safer for investment.”
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