Taking Stock: BG/Royal Dutch deal will see Big Four fees scramble
Royal Dutch's audit is up for tender...will it keep EY as BG's auditors post-merger?...Is there any due-dil work to win? Fees are there for the taking, believes TS
COULD PwC’s audit bods be set to make an emotional return to BG Group?
Taking Stock only asks as the mega-multi-whopping-gazillion quid deal that could see BG Group acquired by Royal Dutch Shell, might, possibly, see a shift in auditors.
EY took on BG’s audit, replacing incumbent PwC, back in 2012.
Royal Dutch Shell, whose audit work is at the top of the lucrative end, is undertaken by…PwC. However, Royal Dutch is actually tendering for an auditor at the moment…perhaps it’ll all work out well for EY – rather than PwC.
Then there’s KPMG, which was ditched by Royal Dutch Shell as joint auditor ten years ago: will it be sniffing around for some tasty due diligence work on the deal, or pushing for the big audit piece? Or both?
As we know folks, where there’s a deal, there’s money to be made in professional services fees…
And in case you were wondering, the Royal Dutch audit fee is a mere $50m (£33.5m).
View Financial Director’s 2015 Audit Fees Survey here