RSS feedsUK managing partners at mid-tier firms Grant Thornton and BDO Stoy Hayward have welcomed the Oxera report examining the audit dominance of the Big Four, saying such dominance creates a risk to the continued smooth operation of capital markets.
In a joint letter written to the FT, Jeremy Newman, managing partner at BDO and Michael Cleary, managing partner at Grant Thornton, said the extent to which the dominance existed ‘is unnecessary and, in the view of many, unhealthy’.
They went on to say: ‘There might be as few as 150 UK companies whose audits require either such scale of resources (some but not all of the FTSE 100) or such highly specialised resources (large banks and insurance companies) that they are best served by a Big Four firm.'
However, they said they were opposed to the market being changed artificially by regulators such as breaking up the Big Four.
