More than two dozen individuals and organizations, including CFA, submitted a comment letter to the SEC urging it to deny a rule change proposed by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) that would weaken auditor independence standards. “Like the SEC rules on which they are based, these changes would weaken auditor independence standards, further undermining investors’ faith in the reliability of financial disclosures and putting the integrity of our capital markets at risk. In a gross abuse of process, these changes were adopted by the PCAOB without any opportunity for public comment and without any apparent consideration of how they will affect communications between auditors and audit committees. They are now being hurried through the approval process at the SEC under an artificially short timeframe. For these and other reasons discussed below, the rule changes should be withdrawn,” the groups wrote.