With a review of audit here in the UK not yet resolved, the Big Four now find themselves dealing with a fresh assault on their dominance by US regulatory authorities.

It now looks like they will have to go through the very same debate they wrestled with here in the UK, that four big firms are too few and what do you do to resolve it?

Here in the UK the Big Four lobbied hard for the view that the market should be left to resolve the issue. People are free to choose other auditors, they insisted, it just so happens the Big Four are the best.

Mid tier firms denied claiming the market was stacked unfairly against them. As a result the Financial Reporting Council are finding ways of encouraging another market – the one for starting up new international firms.

The Wall Street Journal already has a line on what the outcome may be in the US and points at two broad changes to come: limiting of liability, and measures to reduce ‘the concentration of auditors in the hands of a few big firms’.

Current SEC chairman Christopher Cox has already indicated how impressed he is with the way the UK is dealing with the issue of audit choice. But Arthur Levitt is in charge, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, under Bill Clinton, and is on record as saying that accountancy firms cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.

Big changes are clearly on the way then. But the US is also looking at the review from a different perspective. In the UK limiting liability and efforts to deal with lack of choice came about as a result of two different reviews.

The US study is attempting to deal with both issues at once, a fact that may create a very different dynamic when it comes to finding solutions.

The US Treasury is also worried about the vast number of accounting restatements that take place each year. The belief is that the restatements are forced by aggressive accounting caused by auditors who feel they shoulder a disproportionate burden of risk.

But even then the driver here is not good regulation in itself, but regulation that serves competitiveness of the US market as a whole.

Robert Steel, under secretary for US domestic finance said in a recent speech that the audit review was triggered because: ‘The auditing industry faces other challenges, which if remedied will enhance our competitiveness.’

The UK looked at the competitiveness of the audit market – Washington wants something to deal with the competitiveness of US capital markets as a whole.

It could well be that any remedies that emerge may well be more sympathetic to the position of accountancy firms over there than they might otherwise seem.

That might also explain why there has been barely a word of concern in the US press from the auditors themselves. They might be back in the office quietly seething, but equally they might be looking forward to the relaxation of some of the rules that currently govern them.