PCAOB Chair Erica Williams to Resign at Request of SEC Chairman
July 15, 2025
Williams’s last day will be July 22, according to an email she sent to staff
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Chair Erica Williams is stepping down after Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins asked her to resign. Her last day will be July 22, according to an email she sent to PCAOB staff.
“Today I accepted Erica Williams’ offer to resign as chair and a board member of the PCAOB and thanked her for her service,” Atkins said. “We look forward to advancing our oversight responsibilities of the PCAOB as it continues its important work.”
PCAOB leadership was revamped by the past two presidential administrations, and the watchdog has been bracing for another shake-up in President Trump’s second term—even its potential elimination.
The Republican-led House in May passed a provision to eliminate the PCAOB and fold it into the SEC as part of a tax-and-spending megabill. However, it was spared earlier this month as the Senate passed a bill that no longer included the provision.
Williams, a former litigation partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis, started as chair of the auditing watchdog in January 2022 and was reappointed in June 2024.
The PCAOB under Williams led a push during the Biden administration to set several auditing standards that auditors opposed. A proposed rule on fraud detection was particularly contentious, with auditors saying it would require skills that go far beyond their professional abilities while many investors saying it would help provide transparency. The PCAOB, shortly after Trump’s election, scrapped plans to vote in 2024 on adopting it, leaving its fate uncertain.
“I know you have questions about what is next for PCAOB leadership. Unfortunately, I do not have the answers you deserve,” Williams said in her email to staff.
“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,” she said. “With high economic uncertainty increasing the risk of fraud, the PCAOB’s mission is as important as ever.”
The SEC appoints the PCAOB’s board members, including the chair, and can remove them at will. Atkins frequently criticized the auditing watchdog as a Republican SEC commissioner in the 2000s.
The SEC under Gary Gensler in 2021 dismissed Trump-era PCAOB Chair William Duhnke and replaced most of the five-member board amid what was described in an SEC-commissioned report as a culture of fear under Duhnke. Four years earlier during Trump’s first term, the SEC, then led by Jay Clayton, replaced the entire board.
[The Wall Street Journal]
