Four EY partners left the company in December following breaches of independence rules tied to EY’s audit work for Shell, the Financial Times (FT) reported.

The compliance issue led Shell to remove EY from an audit contract valued at around $66m a year.

The FT, citing public records and people familiar with the matter, said the departures followed an internal review as EY moved to limit the fallout.

Those who left included Gary Donald, who led the Shell audit, and one partner who had joined EY’s senior leadership only months earlier, the FT said.

Shell said in July that EY breached US regulator requirements on audit partner rotation after Donald stayed as lead auditor for Shell’s 2023 and 2024 accounts.

In October, the UK accounting regulator opened an investigation into EY’s 2024 Shell audit.

Shell later said it would change auditor, appointing PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) from next year.

The other partners who left in December were identified by the FT as Mark Woodward and Hee Yu Lee, both auditors with oil and gas experience, and Alistair Denton, whose role was in EY’s national office function overseeing compliance, including independence.

Companies House records cited by the FT show Lee became part of EY’s equity partnership in June 2025. Denton and Woodward had been partners since 2010 and 2017, respectively.

Woodward, Lee and Denton did not respond to the FT’s requests for comment.

EY also declined to comment, including on the circumstances of the departures and the conclusions of its review.

The FT said it was not clear whether any of the former partners were found to have broken rules or internal policies, or whether any appeals were ongoing.

Rotation rules are meant to protect auditor independence and typically limit how long senior auditors can remain on a client engagement, often either five or seven consecutive years.

Donald began leading the Shell audit in 2021, and during that period also held the role of EY’s global oil and gas assurance leader, overseeing audit services in the sector.

People familiar with the matter told the FT that a whistleblower had alerted EY leaders that some of Donald’s earlier work should have “started the clock” sooner, reducing the number of years he could sign off Shell’s accounts.

Another person familiar with EY’s independence decision-making told the FT there “isn’t always a black and white answer” when applying elements of the rules.

“Sometimes the wrong conclusion can be reached even though everyone thought it was right,” the person said.

Shell said in July that EY appointed a new lead auditor to re-examine the last two years of work and concluded no changes to Shell’s financial statements were required.

PwC was Shell’s auditor until 2016. It did not win back the mandate when it came up for tender in 2024.

After the independence breach, Shell’s audit committee asked PwC and EY to bid again, assessing them on factors including independence, team composition, audit scoping and regulatory compliance, according to a person familiar with the process.