Mazars Aims to Challenge Big Four Firms’ U.K. Audit Dominance

French accounting firm Mazars Group intends to muscle its way into Big Four U.K. auditing dominance of public companies.

Mazars has called for a switch to joint audits, which, it says, has opened up the market to mid-sized firms in its home country of France.

Joint audits, where two firms work together to produce a single audit report, are mandatory for larger companies publishing consolidated accounts in France. This often forces the biggest firms to team up with mid-sized accounting firms.

As a result, around four times more firms are active in listed-company audits than in the U.K., David Herbinet, ...