Here is some big4 news I found interesting from around the world

1. UK’s FRC to probe EY and PwC for their audit of investment firm London Capital & Finance. PwC audited the company in 2016 and EY in 2017. The company failed in 2019 leading to 11,000 investors loosing ~$293 million. Read more here

2. After a long search GE appointed Deloitte as its auditor from fiscal year 2021 onwards. Deloitte replaces KPMG which audited the company from 1909. Fun fact! GE’s predecessor Edison General Electric Company was incorporated in NY on April 24, 1889. Wonder who audited it for the initial 10 years. Probably did a sloppy job then and KPMG was bought it!

3. There was a lot of staff churning in Big4 firms across the world. We won’t discuss any firing or hiring freezes here folks. Let’s keep this space purely for building and updating other big4 related knowledge

4. Auditor changes for this week in the US – There is obviously the big one GE. GE’s audit fees to KPMG have been coming down for a while now. In 2018 KPMG was paid $105 million which came down to $79 million in 2019. Guess, Deloitte would come under that maybe with a little bump in the initial year for transition. We’ll have to wait for that till 2022 proxy! Bad week for BDO. Although small in fees, tough losing clients in COVID season!

Before we leave, here is the picture of the week. Sign of times we live in [From CNN]