Good morning from the Financial Times.
Today is Friday, December 5th, and this is your FT News Briefing.
The big four auditors continue to reign supreme in the UK.
Plus,
higher interest rates in Japan are doing interesting things to currency trades and the bond market.
I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.
Big four accounting firms continue to dominate the UK's largest audits.
That's according to the industry watchdog, the Financial Reporting Council.
So what does the stranglehold mean for the rest of the market?
EFT's accountancy correspondent, Ellie Sheva Kissen, reported on this and joins me now.
Hi, Ellie Sheva.
Hi.
So this report from the Financial Reporting Council, what did it find?
So it found that non-Big Four firms had increased their share of audits for public interest entities by one percentage point.
But that's pretty small for an entire year of effort from the regulator.
So the big four accounting firms Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PWC,
they've maintained a stranglehold on major audits for years.
They took 98% with the fees paid by the FTSE 350 this year.
Smaller firms really struggle to break into that market,
partly because it's more hazardous, they're more difficult complex audits,