David Herbinet has spent four frustrating years attempting to break into the UK’s top-tier audit market. But the 36-year-old, a partner at Mazars, a mid-sized accountancy firm, has yet to establish a foothold.
“A lot of companies feel there is no alternative to the big four,” he sighs, referring to the giant audit firms that lord it over Mazars and its peers. “It’s [like] the saying that ‘nobody’s ever been sacked for buying IBM’. There is a lack of willingness to take a chance with something different.”
Far from storming the big four barricades, Mazars is actually losing ground. Last May its sole FTSE 350 client – Brit Insurance – decamped to Ernst & Young. The defection marked another small but telling tightening of the big firms’ iron grip. The quartet, completed by PwC, Deloitte and KPMG, between them verify the accounts at all but one of the UK’s 100 biggest companies and 98 per cent of the FTSE 350. The markets for legal work and corporate finance advice are positively diverse by comparison.
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