A LONG-AWAITED report into the dominance of the Big Four accounting firms was welcomed by auditors yesterday after it declined to make any policy recommendations, reports The Times .
According to the paper, the 169-page report, commissioned by the Department for Trade and Industry, acknowledged that PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young collected 99% of the audit fees of FTSE 350 companies and that some listed companies, particularly in the financial services sector, were constrained in their choice of auditor. However the report, which was also commissioned by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), did not find any evidence of anti-competitive behaviour by the Big Four firms and did not make any recommendations on how mid-tier accountancies could ...
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