The Financial Services Authority paid out nearly half a million pounds to secondees from accounting, law and banking firms during the last financial year.
In details from a Freedom of Information request by the FT, 32 secondees from KPMG, E&Y, PwC, Herbert Smith, Clifford Chance and Standard Chartered were supplied to the FSA.
The secondees from Big Four firms cost the FSA a total £163,000.
FSA spokesman Christopher Hamilton said it was common practice for the FSA to take secondees from industry and vice versa, to provide specialist insight and experience.
Further reading:
Regulator fears auditors may abandon scepticism to meet deadlines