« More bonus pay thinking | Main | Executive pay finds some common sense »
Shock news: The Big Four dominates!
Let me wander off the usual topic for this blog of high flying finance people for just a moment.
Here's a shocker. Grant Thornton has produced a report saying that the Big Four dangerously dominates global audit markets.
Let that sink in for a moment. This is the UK's fifth largest firm, one that has been complaining about the Big Four's dominance of the UK for some time telling us it has done research that reveals the Big Four dominate globally.
I can't help asking myself the question - would GT have press released the research if it had concluded, by sheer chance, that someone else dominated other than the Big Four? Here's another. Would GT embark on research like that if it didn't know the answer in advance? Who else, like me, immediately thought, 'What else would GT research find?'
Sadly, I can't help feeling GT has managed to tell us something we already knew.
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blogs-1.gos.vnu.net/mt-tb.cgi/84117
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Shock news: The Big Four dominates!.
My question to you sir, is what do you propose we do about it? The purpose of the article was not so much to bring forth a novel concept rather to keep in the forefront an issue with profound implications
Posted by :Robert Riecken | June 19, 2007 8:45 PM
Take the point about keeping the issue in the forefront of the profession's/regulator's/clients' attention. My point, perhaps, is a narrow one about how you do that.
In many senses research is easy, but it's also likely to end up producing results most of us could reach through an educated guess.
What the mid tier needs to be is more inventive. Take the Jeremy Newman blog (BDO managing partner) which featured the uncomfortable battle his firm went through to win a top audit.
That provides insight into the way audit competition appears to be working, involves some personal risk in revealing the episode and gives us a new angle on the story.
Granted, finding new angles is not easy. And PR is perhaps not a skill that comes easily to accountants.
I guess you judge the Grant Thornton effort by its results and the research does not appear to have garnered a great deal of coverage. Yet. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Posted by :Gavin Hinks | June 20, 2007 7:32 AM