Financial Services Authority chairman Sir Howard Davies says he 'cannot see the world surviving with only four accounting firms' and branded the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand 'a mistake' that was 'not good for the market'
Link: Read the full interview with Howard Davies
In an interview with Accountancy Age’s sister title Financial Director, he called on the competition authorities in Europe and the US to examine the Big Four‘s hold on the market.
Davies said the FSA had ‘considerable concerns’ about the lack of competition for audit services, ‘though it’s not easy to do anything about it in one country,’ he explained.
‘The difficulty is that it is a global issue and probably only the merger taskforce at the EU and US Department of Justice can take this on effectively. I hope that in due course they do.’
He believes the competition authorities are ‘waiting for things to settle down’ before competition issues ‘ come back on the agenda’.
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