Big Four's dominance under threat

Mid-tier firms are cranking up the pressure for action to break the stranglehold the Big Four has on large company audits, ahead of the publication of new research on competition in the audit market.

Consultancy Oxera is due to hand over the findings of its study into the competitiveness of the UK audit market to the Department of Trade and Industry next month. It is hoped the report will suggest some solutions to the issue of the Big Four’s current dominance of audit at the high-end.

But the second level of accounting firms, which have previously shown little appetite to take on the Big Four, are starting to push change in order to compete.

‘We need to be focusing on broadening the number of people who are auditing the FTSE350 companies and the companies immediately outside that,’ said BDO Stoy Hayward managing partner Jeremy Newman. ‘We want to raise the awareness of investors, audit committees or otherwise that we are willing and able to do that work.’

Newman is hoping that the report will provide some useful ideas, but admits that the task of creating greater competition is tough.

‘We do now have a Big Four, they do have a virtual monopoly over the FTSE100 and they do monopolise the FTSE350,’ he said.

The firms had a ‘presence in the hearts and minds’ of many in business, with ‘an overwhelming percentage’ of those involved in the decision to appoint an auditor being alumni of the Big Four, he said.

RSM Robson Rhodes senior partner Chris Connor has suggested that companies should be ‘actively encouraged’ by shareholders to include firms outside the Big Four on tender lists.

In a letter to Accountancy Age, Grant Thornton chief executive Michael Cleary said that the ‘biggest problem’ lies among those quoted companies below the FTSE100.

‘Addressing this over the next few years would not only increase choice for the majority of UK public companies, and thereby increase audit quality, but it might also provide a platform in future from which the Big Four stranglehold on the very largest companies might be attacked.’