U.K. Regulator Threatens Radical Action to Open Audit Business

The U.K.’s competition regulator has threatened to introduce more radical audit reforms, including removing companies’ right to choose their own auditors, if accounting firms continue to oppose change.

“Those in the industry and elsewhere who pay lip service to the need to go ‘from four to more’ should not doubt the CMA’s resolve,” Will Hayter, senior director of the Competition and Markets Authority, said Wednesday in a blog post.

Hayter was referring to the agency’s desire to get more firms from outside of the Big Four—Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG—to audit big British companies.

If the Big Four do ...