The Big Four Accounting Firms

Decent Essays
The Big Four Accounting firms are the four largest accounting firms offering services worldwide. The Big Four firms are Deloitte, Pricewaterhousecoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG. These large, universal firms offer services in three different lines of service classified as assurance, tax and advisory. Additionally, these firms handle most of the audits for public companies worldwide and provides audits for many private companies. Each of the big four firms have many employees however, they are classified and taxed as limited-liability partnerships, not corporations. This means some or all of the partners have limited liability, so one partner is not liable for another partner’s misconduct or negligence. During the 1980s, the largest universal accounting firms were referenced to as the Big Eight. Throughout the years, the number of eight dwindled down to four due to various mergers and major scandals. Prior …show more content…
Deloitte is headquartered in NYC, the company earned over thirty-six billion for the the financial year ending in May and employs over 244,000 people. In second place is Pricewaterhousecoopers, who’s headquartered in United Kingdom, earns over thirty-five billion in revenues and employs over 200,000 people. Third place is Ernst & Young, headquartered in the United Kingdom, earns over twenty-eight billion in revenue and employs over 200,000 people. Finally, in fourth place is KPMG, with over twenty-four billion in revenue and over 173,000 professionals. The Big Four accounting firms audit the highest number of public companies compared to the rest of the accounting firms. According to a 2016 audit analytics report, EY audits 994 public companies, PwC follows auditing 717 companies, KPMG audits 692 public companies and Deloitte audits 664 public companies. Of the 4212 public companies registered with the SEC, a total of 44.2% of the marker share belongs to Big Four accounting

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