AN investigation is being launched into accounting at the collapsed bus maker Mayflower and its subsidiaries.

The Accountancy Investigation and Discipline Board (AIDB) said it planned to investigate auditing at Mayflower and its subsidiaries in the past four years by the group's former auditors, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Arthur Andersen.

The accounts of Mayflower's windfarm division, Mayflower Energy, in Middlesbrough, will be investigated as part of the probe.

Mayflower Energy was the subject of a management buy-out earlier this year and became a separate company, Marine Projects International.

Cameron Scott, executive counsel at the AIDB, said the conduct of Mayflower's auditors, and not the company as such, was the subject of the investigation.

But the AIDB said it would also be looking at the conduct of Mayflower's former finance director, David Donnelly.

The probe will be the first by the AIDB since it was created in May as part of an independent accountancy regulator, the Financial Reporting Council.

Administrators have sold the Mayflower Group's UK businesses, including Mayflower Energy, since it entered administration in March.

The company collapsed following problems at Transbus International, Mayflower's biggest division in the UK with 2,640 employees at sites including Falkirk, Belfast, Wigan and Guildford.

The operation, which was 30 per cent owned by bus maker Henlys, faced increased overheads and competition from European rivals, causing a 16 per cent fall in half-year group profits last August.

The AIDB investigators are expected to look in particular at accounting irregularities at Transbus.

Administrators have sold Transbus to a consortium led by investment group Noble Grossart and involving Scottish metals entrepreneur David Murray and Brian Souter, the boss of bus and rail group Stagecoach.

Although the other UK businesses and a German operation have also been sold, the company's US heavy truck and light vehicle business did not enter administration and continues to operate.

The AIDB can seek to impose unlimited fines on firms or individuals or to have them expelled from the profession's representative bodies.