The Structural Break-up of the Big Four Accountancy Firms to Restore Market Confidence in Audit Services.

Abstract

The increase on audit failures and scandals over the last decades helped to mitigate public confidence in audit services. The Big Four firms’ oligopoly seems not to be helpful in terms of addressing this issue. UK’s lawmakers and regulators have proposed though a BEIS report the separation between audit and non-audit services on the top four firms. Given the above, the objective of this research is to understand this proposal from the point of view of the challenger firms regarding their capacity of attending more clients due to this change on audit market and whether this movement would be able to restore public confidence in audit services. The study results indicate that the structural break-up of the Big Four is supported by smaller firms even though some of them would need to invest in more staff to attend new clients. In terms of stakeholders and general public, it is believed that such change in the market is helpful but adding a closer action of regulator might be more effective to restore confidence in audit services. The research also indicates that expectation gap is one of the key challenges that auditors face in terms of public confidence. This change in the market might create benefits that would flow down to the market, working in favour not only of medium-tier firms but also small ones. The benefit of increase on audit quality would probably take time to be seen, but once the firms are adapted it might arise, with more independence and a better ethical culture within the firms.