One of the “Big Four” accounting firms, Deloitte, said late Wednesday that media reports that the company is looking into a plan to split its global audit and consulting practises are “categorically false.”
The Wall Street Journal broke the news of the split earlier in the day. This came a few weeks after another of the Big Four accounting firms, Ernst & Young, said it was looking at ways to improve the quality of audits.
A Deloitte representative told Reuters, “As we’ve said before, we’re still committed to our current business model.”
According to the WSJ article, Deloitte has reached out to Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) investment bankers, but talks are still in the very early stages.
People who know about the situation told the WSJ that Goldman and JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) are giving Ernst & Young advice about its possible restructuring.
Another of the Big Four accounting firms, KPMG, wouldn’t say anything about its business plans.
A company representative told Reuters that PricewaterhouseCoopers is “fully committed to our strategy, which we announced last year, and has no plans to change course.”
Last year, PricewaterhouseCoopers announced a new global strategy that included putting more money into improving audit quality.
The four big accounting firms have been under the watchful eye of regulators for years because of concerns that their advisory services could hurt the quality of audits and possibly cause conflicts of interest.
In response to recommendations from three government-funded reviews on how to improve auditing in a market dominated by the Big Four, Britain made changes to the way audits are done for big companies last month.
