The Hill News

On February 18th 2011, a Greek member of the European Parliament, Niki Tzavela, raised a  parliamentary question to EU Commissioner Barnier. In the background was a protest of the accounting firms BDO, Grant Thornton, RSM and Mazars which had asked to break up the oligopoly of the so called “big four." It is an oligopoly which means that Fortune companies don’t dare to take an auditor other than KPMG, Ernst & Young, PWC or Deloitte. Companies fear that banks, which have so-called big four clauses in their contracts, will stop lending if they do so.

The answer of EU Commissioner Barnier towards MEP Tzavela on March 30th was quite clear. The commission not only recognized this problem, but determined to solve it. The EU Commission's respective action is based on it's green paper, “Audit Policy: Lessons from the Crisis,” from last October. According to Barnier, the initiative’s goal is to create more competition among the accounting firms and destroy th! e market power of the big four.

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