SUSPENDED: A U.S. judge has ruled the China branches of global accounting firms should be barred from providing audits for U.S.-traded companies in a dispute that might force major corporate names such as oil giant PetroChina and search engine Baidu to withdraw from American stock exchanges.

THE RULING: In a ruling Wednesday, an administrative law judge for the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission said Chinese firms affiliated with the “Big Four” accounting firms — PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, KPMG and Ernst & Young — acted improperly when they withheld documents from fraud investigators. The firms said Chinese law barred them from releasing the documents.