We have been talking now for a long time about real competition in the audit market; even the regulators are involved - but little has yet been done to change the current situation.
I am not alone in believing it is far from healthy or desirable for just four firms to dominate the market place for the audits of larger companies. In the UK, the Big Four act for 98 per cent of the FTSE 350 and much of the rest of the fully listed sector.
There are a number of reasons for this, including the invisible barriers to entry into this exclusive club.
Among these barriers is the fact that many companies have loan and other arrangements that state they must use a Big Four auditor. In other cases informal pressure is put on companies to use a Big Four auditor only because they are bigger. This is simply anti-competitive.
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