Big Four Halve UK Clients Across 20 Years, Leaning on Big Audits

Big UK accounting firms have slashed the number of UK-listed audit clients in the past 20 years to concentrate on the largest and most lucrative work, according to a new report.

The Big Four firms—Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG, and PwC—lost more than half of their audit clients during that time, but the value, or market capitalization, of those companies more than doubled, Adviser Rankings found.

Mid-sized firms have been taking up the slack. BDO, the country’s fifth-biggest firm, is now the second-biggest auditor by client numbers, up from sixth in 2005 and ahead of EY, ...