Big Four firms

It’s hard to distinguish between Big Four firms – at least that’s what we thought.  But our recent research with 400+ clients tells us otherwise.

There are certainly areas where clients do think these firms are hard to tell apart; “they’re all much of a much-ness”, was how one of them put it.  Certainly everyone associates them with financial management and regulatory-driven work: no surprise there.  And almost everyone says their people are “good”, though rarely anything more than good, even if their knowledge of specific industries tends to be rated highly.

The European Commission’s rumoured plans to force Big Four firms into separating audit from consulting are a classic case of barking up the wrong tree.

Everyone in consulting knows that the Big Four accounting firms (Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG and PwC) have all grown significantly in the last few years. Indeed, many of us have suspected that they may have out-performed the market, sometimes by a factor of two or three. But none of us could put a figure on what that means for market share.