Big Four news and trends

UK Moves To Split Audit And Consulting Profits At Big Four
Regulation // July 06, 2020

The Big Four accounting firms will have to put their United Kingdom auditing and consulting practices in separate business units by 2024, but may keep them within the same parent companies, under regulations announced today by the Financial Reporting Council. The measures by the U.K.’s...

Wirecard Saga Reignites Debate Over Auditors’ Role In Combatting Fraud
B2B Payments // July 02, 2020

As the fallout from Wirecard‘s $2 billion accounting scandal continues, some attention has turned to the Germany-based payment company’s auditor, Ernst & Young (EY). A report in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said EY is now facing claims that the firm failed to identify “unorthodox...

Treasury APIs, BNPL And Robinhood’s Outage Top This Week’s News
The Weekender // March 06, 2020

It’s the end of the workweek, and the PYMNTS Weekender is here to make sure you didn’t miss anything with the latest in payments and commerce news. We have deep dives into treasury application programming interfaces (APIs) and buy now, pay later (BNPL), as well as...

UK Moves Closer To Big Four Accountancy Breakup
B2B Payments // March 01, 2020

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the U.K.’s audit regulator, announced plans this week to break up the dominance of the largest four accounting firms, Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC, according to the Financial Times. The regulator issued letters to those firms, known as the Big...

Quick Reads
Big Four Seek Guidance On Trade Finance

October 25, 2019
Top accountancy firms are asking the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to clarify how corporates should report on supplier finance programs that are in place, according to Compliance Week reports on Friday (Oct. 25). The Big Four accounting firms – Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and EY – submitted a joint letter earlier in the month to […]

UK Challenger Banks Struggle To Compete

September 30, 2019
Challenger banks in the U.K. are having a hard time competing with the country’s big four financial institutions. While challengers such as Metro Bank, Santander and Monzo were expected to...