Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Big Four: The Curious Past and Perilous Future of the Global Accounting Monopoly
    The Big Four: The Curious Past and Perilous Future of the Global Accounting Monopoly
    The Big Four: The Curious Past and Perilous Future of the Global Accounting Monopoly
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Big Four: The Curious Past and Perilous Future of the Global Accounting Monopoly

    Written by Ian D. Gow and Stuart Kells

    Narrated by Wayne Shepherd

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    With staffs that are collectively larger than the Russian army and combined revenues of over $130 billion a year, the Big Four accounting firms—Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG—are a keystone of global commerce. But leading scholar Ian Gow and award-winning author Stuart Kells warn that a house of cards may be about to fall.

    Stretching back to the Medicis in Renaissance Florence, this book is a fascinating story of wealth, power, and luck. The founders of the Big Four lived surprisingly colorful lives. Samuel Price, for example, married his own niece. Between the world wars, Nicholas Waterhouse collected postage stamps while also hosting decadent parties in his fashionable London home.

    All four firms have endured major calamities in recent decades. There have been hundreds of court cases and legal prosecutions for failed audits, tax scandals, and breaches of independence. The firms have come so close to “extinction level events” that regulators have required them to prepare “living wills.” And today, the Big Four face an uncertain future—thanks to their push into China, their vulnerability to digital disruption and competition, and the hazards of providing traditional services in a new era of transparency.

    This account of the past, present, and likely future of the Big Four is essential reading for anyone perplexed or fascinated by professional services, working or considering working in the industry, or simply curious about the fate of the global economy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBerrett-Koehler Publishers
    Release dateAug 28, 2018
    ISBN9781523098002
    Author

    Ian D. Gow

    Ian D. Gow is currently at Harvard Business School and will soon take up a professorship at the University of Melbourne. Before Harvard, he held positions at Morgan Stanley, General Motors, Stern Stewart & Co. and Andersen Consulting. He has a PhD in business from Stanford University, an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and degrees in commerce and law from UNSW.

    Related to The Big Four

    Related audiobooks

    Corporate & Business History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Why Tax Havens Persist, and Where a Rethink Could Take Hold

      Nov 8, 2017

      What could be $200 billion in tax revenue instead sits in offshore centers, parked there by individuals and corporations, often legally. Some reformers would like to remedy that. One lever: new attention on the ethics and morality of the practice.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Pandora Papers Leak

      Oct 8, 2021

      The Pandora Papers Leak
      3 min read

    • Article

      Australia's Commonwealth Games Saga Highlights More Ills Of Embattled Big Four Firms

      Jul 21, 2023

      In a case of intertwining scandals, Australia's most embarrassing moment this year might just save citizens some financial pain while unearthing more evidence against apparent cronyism and greedy corporations. But first, a little bit more about that

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Kleptocrats Next Door

      Dec 8, 2021

      The Kleptocrats Next Door
      8 min read

    • Article

      Hidden Figures

      Dec 13, 2023

      Hidden Figures
      10 min read

    • Article

      Who’s The Thief?

      Feb 20, 2020

      Who’s The Thief?
      6 min read

    • Article

      Disclosure In The Caymans: Global Walls Of Financial Secrecy Are Falling

      May 3, 2018

      A new British law could have big ripple effects as part of a global trend toward financial transparency. Disclosure of who really owns offshore companies can counter crime and reduce the inequality that arises from corruption or tax evasion.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Immigration Raids, Burger Wars And Other Business Stories You May Have Missed In 2019

      Dec 31, 2019

      Engineered meat, immigration raids on chicken plants, and the big target on the backs of big technology companies are some of the business stories that made headlines in 2019.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Book In The News… The Wild Adventurers Who Put The Sugar In Your Tea

      Oct 15, 2021

      Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources Javier Blas and Jack Farchy Random House Business, £20 Most of us don’t pause to consider how the tea or sugar in our morning cuppa got into our mug, as the raw materials that make ou

      1 min read

    • Article

      In A Nutshell

      Sep 1, 2022

      WHAT WAS THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE? The South Sea Bubble was a period of speculation frenzy and collapse on the British stock market, revolving around the fate of a single company. For years, the South Sea Company had been at the centre of a complex and t

      4 min read

    • Article

      Open China?

      Jan 1, 2019

      Open China?
      5 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Financial Columnists

      Sep 22, 2023

      Damien PhillipsThe Spectator Wilko joins a “pantheon” of big names, from Warehouse to Paperchase, who have been forced to “shut their doors” since Covid, says Damien Phillips. Since 2018, 6,000 storefronts have closed and the situation is now so dire

      3 min read

    • Article

      From The Editor

      Jun 25, 2021

      there is something to be said for momentum – social and economic. It is a concept that has special bearing on human behaviour and expectations. Where a trend has firmly become established and enough people have come to expect that it will continue, m

      3 min read

    • Article

      Hiding Wealth In Tax Havens Is Profoundly Antisocial And Unfair. It Must Stop

      Oct 8, 2021

      Five years after the Panama papers exposed the vast scale of offshore banking and business services via the activities of the wealth management specialist Mossack Fonseca, hundreds of billions of dollars are still being secreted away in tax havens. T

      2 min read

    • Article

      Tabloid Money… The “Covid Panic” Is Ushering In A Cashless Society

      Sep 10, 2021

      • It is “usually best to ignore” the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s proclamations, says Ross Clark in the Daily Express. But Harry’s latest charge, that the developed world is “somehow depriving the developing world of vaccines”, is offensive. Yes, mor

      1 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Financial Columnists

      Apr 8, 2022

      The 1990s saw a “great uncoupling” between left-wing political parties and “big labour”. The same may now happening between conservatives and big business, says Adrian Wooldridge. In the US, politicians and thinkers on the right from Kevin McCarthy a

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Faces Of 2022

      Dec 23, 2022

      As falls from grace go, it’s hard to think of one more spectacular than that of Sam Bankman-Fried. As recently as June, the 30-year-old FTX founder was being hailed as the “JP Morgan of millennials”. SBF, as he was universally known, was even rumoure

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Big Four

    4/5

    4 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      It's good to see a book about big 4 because despite its huge importance and influence, we don't have many books on it. The book does a good job of covering the history of Big 4. The issues with the book are as follows.

      First, it is true that auditors can be massively influenced by the client. However, if such case was so prevalent then we would not have audit and the audit market would collapse.

      Second, I have heard and saw cases of poor audits. Also, it is true that inexperienced auditors are not that great. But if inexperienced auditors made such a mess, we would see much more fraud and craziness.

      Third, the comparison to Medici family was interesting but not necessary-

      Overall, nice to see a book about Big 4 but it would have been better if it talked more about what is working and why the audit market has not collapsed if there were so many problems.
    • 5/5
      Superb. This book seems to touch all the big questions about how the Big 4 came to be, as well as who and what they are. The conjecture over the future of Public Accounting is the start of an exciting discussion. I highly recommend this well narrated audiobook.
    • 3/5
      This book was okay, but had a decent amount of filler material and wandered between hustorical and current times. It didn't dive as deep as I would have hoped.