Ernst & Young failures found

Ernst & Young, one of the four biggest U.S. accounting firms, didn’t catch errors that were probably relevant to companies’ financial statements and failed to perform some required procedures in the audits it conducted, the federal regulator that oversees accounting firms said Wednesday.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s findings arose from its 2006 review of the firm’s audits. The board was created under the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law.

An Ernst & Young spokesman, in response to the report, said the inspections offered “important feedback to the profession.”