The US Treasury is following the example of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) in the UK by reviewing the country's audit market, reports AccountancyAge.
Continuing dominance of the market by the Big 4 firms may not be entirely sustainable, the US Treasury has realised.
In a recent article in the Financial Times, the secretary of the US Treasury, Henry Paulson, said that the Enron fiasco and the ensuing collapse of the accounting giant Arthur Andersen "raised legitimate questions about the sustainability of the auditing profession's business model".
FRC initiative lauded
Earlier this month the chief executive of the FRC, Paul Boyle, promised to continue reviews of the audit market in the UK.
Of the FRC's recent efforts in this regard, the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Paul Boyle, recently said: "The SEC is very impressed with the market participants group interim report, particularly its focus on contingency planning in the event of a large firm leaving the market."
The chairman of KPMG Europe has stated that he would accept other accountancy firms establishing themselves in the UK to the extent that the Big 4 have.
But the dominance of Ernst & Young, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG is not bad for competition, John Griffiths-Jones told the Scotsman.
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