A Sydney-based auditor has lost his New Zealand licence over multiple breaches linked to the audit of a medicinal cannabis company that later went into receivership.<\/p>\n
The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) said it had cancelled Scott Bennison’s licence to carry out financial markets conduct (FMC) audits in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
The regulator said it was satisfied, on reasonable grounds, that Bennison had breached several conditions of his licence. <\/p>\n
The failures primarily related to his role as an engagement quality reviewer for the audit of Greenfern Industries’ group financial statements for the year ending March 31, 2024.<\/p>\n
Greenfern had appointed Bennison, of Sydney-based accounting firm KS Black & Co, as its auditor before the company went into receivership. <\/p>\n
FMA executive director of response and enforcement Louise Unger said the decision followed a statutory process and reflected the seriousness of the conduct identified.<\/p>\n
“Mr Bennison has the right to appeal the FMA\u2019s decision to the District Court under the Auditor Regulation Act 2011,” she said. <\/p>\n
Founded in 2018, Greenfern Industries was a Taranaki-based medicinal cannabis and biotechnology company that also operated in the industrial hemp and hemp food sectors. <\/p>\n
It was placed into receivership in February 2025 after failing to meet payment obligations. <\/p>\n
The FMA thanked the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for its cooperation during the regulatory process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Sydney-based auditor has lost his New Zealand licence over multiple breaches linked to the audit of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[85,138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-625041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}