BRITAIN
Accountants to propose limits on big four
Recommendations include a cap on how many of the 350 biggest companies a big four firm can audit
Britain’s top accountants will meet competition regulators this week to discuss limiting the big four auditors’ market share after MPs called for them to be broken up. MPs have accused EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC of being an "oligopoly" that checks the books of nearly all the 350 leading companies in Britain, with smaller rivals barely having a look-in. After the collapse of outsourcer Carillion in January, a parliamentary committee said the Competition and Markets Authority should consider breaking up the big four into more audit firms and detaching audit arms from consultancy. Accounting industry officials began thrashing out proposals for limiting how many big company audits the big four should be allowed to conduct. Smaller auditing firm Grant Thornton said this year it will give up bidding for top audits as it always came a "glorious second" in a costly exercise in which companies always stuck with one of the big four firms. Officials from the big four, smaller rivals Grant Thor...
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