With respect to the Big Four, it is all déjà vu

Sir, I refer to Brooke Master’s “A clubby oligopoly that is overdue for reform” of August 20 and to your editorial “Accountancy’s Big Four need more competition” August 25.

“The Big Four accounting firms became big by marketing the value of their size. Now they want to have their cake and eat it too, asking to be sheltered from ruinous lawsuits. If accountability is to mean anything in accounting, we cannot afford to turn the concept of professional responsibility into a risk model of affordability.

Individual professionals and small firms lay their names on the line, day after day. If the Big Four cannot handle it, they had better let go. Then we might all be better off. At least the systemic risks will be smaller.”

Sir and that is a letter I wrote and that you published in May 2004, 12 years ago, before I became a pariah to FT.

And years earlier, in 1997, in an Op-Ed in Venezuela I had analyzed much of that issue though from a slightly more local angle. It is amazing to see how serious problems are identified, and then nothing is done to solve these, and they come back to haunt us over and over again.

PS. Brooke Master writes in her piece that a disgruntled PwC trainee described PwC as a “meat grinder” and moaned about how boring the job” Does that not sound like accounting could become ready for the use of robots?

@PerKurowski ©

Why do financial regulatory authorities, while preaching the value of diversification, act in favor of concentration?

Sir I refer to Harriet Agnew’s “FT BIG READ. Professional Services: Accounting for change” August 28.

In November 1999, in an Op-Ed in Caracas Venezuela, this is what I had to say on what is discussed there:

“I recently heard that SEC was establishing higher capital requirements for stockbroker firms, arguing that . . . ‘the weak have to merge to remain. We have to get rid of the rotten apples so that we can renew the trust in the system.’ As I read it, it establishes a very dangerous relationship between weak and rotten. In fact, the financially weakest stockbroker in the system could be providing the most honest services while the big ones, just because of their size, can also bring down the whole world. It has always surprised me how the financial regulatory authorities, while preaching the value of diversification, act in favor of concentration.

The SEC should not substitute the need for capital in place of the need for ethics, nor should it allow that fraudulent behavior hides amid the anonymity of huge firms. In this respect, let us not forget that the risk of social sanctions should be one of the most fundamental tools in controlling financial activities.

Currently market forces favors the larger the entity is, be it banks, law firms, auditing firms, brokers, etc. Perhaps one of the things that the authorities could do, in order to diversify risks, is to create a tax on size.”

@PerKurowski