The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) said on Friday that Price Waterhouse can continue to service existing clients whose financial year started on January 1, 2018, but it refused to grant a stay on a two-year audit ban ordered by the market regulator.

The markets regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India, last week barred Price Waterhouse from auditing listed companies in the country for two years, after a probe into a nearly decade-old accounting fraud case in Satyam.

It had, however, allowed Price Waterhouse to continue auditing books for the current fiscal year ending in March. Price Waterhouse had appealed to SAT to lift the SEBI ban, but the Tribunal only agreed to give it a reprieve to permit it to complete audits it had already taken on for the 2018 calendar year.