KPMG Leads UK Big Four in Losing Audit Clients, Market Share (1)

The UK arms of the Big Four accounting firms have all lost stock-exchange listed clients this year, with smaller firms continuing to increase market share, a new report found.

Adviser Rankings, which tracks the UK audit market, said Monday that the Big Four—Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers—lost listed clients over the year up to Nov. 6. That held true for leading mid-size firms like BDO and Grant Thornton, too.

Despite losing clients the Big Four continued to dominate audits of the largest companies on the London stock exchange, vetting the books of all but two FTSE 100 firms.

Smaller accounting firms did increase their share of FTSE 250 clients, however, auditing 46 companies on that index compared to 39 the previous year.

The UK government has said it wants to introduce more competition to the Big Four for larger audits. That has happened to some extent, with BDO in particular picking up the audits of more FTSE 250 companies in recent years partly because the Big Four have shed smaller or problematic clients in the face of tougher regulation.

Adviser Rankings blamed the overall fall in audit clients this year on a lack of new stock exchange offerings and an 8.3% decrease in the number of listed companies over the year.

But with the exception of Deloitte, all of the Big Four saw their number of audit clients drop by more than the decrease in listed companies. KPMG lost 13.9%, PwC decreased 11.5%, and EY was down 9%.

Deloitte, meanwhile, saw a fall of just 3.6%. It is by far the smallest of the Big Four auditors, losing five companies to leave 134 quoted clients in 2024.

KPMG said in an email that its FTSE 350 market share changed little over the year and that it audited 40% of the biggest 20 UK quoted companies. By market capitalization the firm increased its share of the quoted audit market, the statement said. “The movement is mostly related to very small cap businesses,” KPMG said.

EY and PwC declined to comment. Deloitte did not comment on the fall in its number of audit clients.

Among mid-size firms, BDO saw a 12.6% fall in clients but still remained the largest auditor by number of clients. The firm audited 228 listed companies this year, with PwC in second place at 223.

According to Adviser Rankings there has been no change in the top five quoted company auditors, with EY third and KPMG fourth. PKF Littlejohn beat Deloitte to rank in fifth place.