Grant Thornton is seeing its lead on AIM audits whittled away, as the Big Four gain ground as well as consolidating their domination of the biggest AIM company audits.
The latest Hemscott rankings of auditors on the junior index found that Grant Thornton retains the top spot for AIM companies.

But KPMG, Ernst & Young, PwC and Deloitte all gained clients while GT’s client numbers remained static.

And of the index of the top 100 AIM shares ­ the FTSE AIM 100 ­ the Big Four now audit 66, one up from 65 in the last rankings, and continue to occupy the top four slots in the rankings.

The gap between KPMG and Grant Thornton overall on AIM is now just 25 clients.
Of those Grant Thornton dominates in consumer goods, consumer services, technology and industrials, while KPMG heads up financials and health care. Deloitte tops the basic materials list, and BDO Stoy Hayward is number one in oil & gas.

Ginny Stevens, head of AIM audit at KPMG, said: ‘We are very pleased to have continued to expand our AIM client base. The AIM market is a fast-growing and vibrant one, and is important to KPMG. We are keen to work with ambitious growing companies of all sizes.’

‘When it comes to league tables, everybody loves to be associated with the top positions and we are no different,’ said Nick Jeffrey, national senior audit manager of Grant Thornton. ‘We have had quite a bit of success in recent months with companies from emerging markets, and we have been newly-appointed to seven companies in recent weeks as nominated advisors.’

‘The exciting thing is that the climate is there for us to extend much more widely into the full list,’ said Steve Maslin, Grant Thornton’s head of external professional affairs. ‘For the last 12 months we’ve provided non-audit services to one in four of the FTSE 100.’

Since its launch in 1995, 2,700 companies have joined AIM, raising more than £49bn in the process, both through initial public offerings (IPO’s) and further capital raisings.