Erica Williams will step down from her role as chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board on July 22, the audit regulator said on Tuesday, amid published reports that say she was asked to resign by the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The dedicated staff of the PCAOB are among the most talented and hardworking professionals with whom I have had the opportunity to work, and it has been my honor to serve alongside them,” Williams said in a statement. “The PCAOB plays an essential role in protecting the investments and retirement savings of workers and families across the country while helping to ensure our capital markets remain the envy of the world. With high economic uncertainty increasing the risk of fraud, the PCAOB’s mission is as important as ever. It’s critical the expert PCAOB staff continue to be empowered to carry out their work of ensuring American investors are protected.”
Williams didn’t say in her statement why she was leaving her post. But the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins asked Williams to resign.
In a statement, Atkins said, “Today I accepted Erica Williams’ offer to resign as chair and a board member of the PCAOB and thanked her for her service. I am grateful she has agreed to stay on until July 22nd. We look forward to advancing our oversight responsibilities of the PCAOB as it continues its important work.”
The Trump administration has made it a top initiative to reduce regulation and cut costs, and abolishing the PCAOB has been proposed by Republicans. Project 2025, a conservative blueprint released last year on how the federal government could be reshaped under Donald Trump’s second term as president, called for the PCAOB’s regulatory functions to be merged into the SEC.
The PCAOB came extremely close last month to being shut down and its responsibilities folded into the SEC, as congressional Republicans put a provision in their “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending bill to eliminate the audit regulator. But their plans hit a snag in the Senate when the Senate parliamentarian—the nonpartisan official who interprets the Senate’s complex rules and has a major influence in the day-to-day running of the upper chamber—determined that including the provision in a broader tax bill violated the “Byrd Rule.”
The provision was ultimately scrapped from the Senate’s version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and wasn’t included in the final version that was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Trump on July 4.
GOP lawmakers could reintroduce the proposal at some point, and the SEC, led by Atkins who is a longtime critic of the PCAOB, could also alter the makeup of the board by forcing board members to leave, as he reportedly did with Williams today.
Williams began her second term as chair of the PCAOB on Oct. 24, 2024. The SEC, under then-chair Gary Gensler, reappointed Williams to her current role in June 2024.
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A lawyer by trade, Williams was first appointed chair of the PCAOB in November 2021 and was sworn in on Jan. 10, 2022, becoming the first woman chair of the PCAOB and the first person of color to lead the board. She succeeded William Duhnke, who was ousted in June 2021 before completing his first term as chair.
During her tenure as head of the PCAOB, Williams has taken a tougher enforcement approach than her predecessor, including conducting sweeps, which allows the board to collect information on potential auditing violations from several accounting firms at the same time, while also updating outdated auditing standards and making inspection reports more transparent to investors.
Among her biggest achievements was in 2022 when the PCAOB secured complete access to inspect and investigate audit firms headquartered in China for the first time in history and brought enforcement actions against China-based firms.
- Related article: U.S., China Reach Preliminary Audit Review Deal to Avoid Delistings
- Related article: PCAOB Granted Authority to Inspect Chinese Audit Firms
The PCAOB has imposed record fines on audit firms under Williams’ tenure, but the board has faced criticism from some in the accounting profession that it has focused unfairly on minor infractions.
Prior to joining the PCAOB, Williams was a litigation partner with the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. She previously spent more than a decade in various roles at the SEC, including as deputy chief of staff to three former SEC chairs and assistant chief litigation counsel in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement trial unit. After leaving the SEC, Williams served as special assistant and associate counsel to President Barack Obama with a focus on financial and economic policy issues.
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