The cup is full. The four audit giants will soon have to see their power reviewed and corrected on British territory. The key is the separation of audit activities from those of consulting in order to put an end to the conflict of interest within firms that are supposed to validate the corporate accounts to which they can provide strategy consulting services. In any case, the latest news from the sector militates for urgent reform.

Following the bankruptcy of Wirecard, Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PWC are on their shoes. Tasked with validating the accounts of German electronic payment company Wirecard, which went bankrupt in June after a $2 billion hole was discovered, Ernst & Young is the subject of more than a hundred complaints from investors. which is reminiscent of the misadventure of arthur Anderson, once a member of the Big 5, which fell out of favor following the bankruptcy of Enron, an American energy broker.

A misfortune that never happens alone, EY is also accused of not having identified massive accounting irregularities in the group of hospitals NMC Health in the United Arab Emirates, now in bankruptcy and whose directors are suing it. In the recent past, denmark's largest bank Danske Bank, then audited by EY, went bankrupt without the firm being able to detect billions of euros in suspicious transactions.

In fact, this voluntary or involuntary blindness in the audit industry affects the entire Big Four. From the bankruptcy of the BHS chain of stores in 2016 (PwC), to that of the construction company Carillion in 2018 (KPMG) through the tour operator Thomas Cook in 2019 – (EY), or by the scandalous audit (Deloitte) of the software company Autonomy acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2011, it seems that the profession, if not sanctioned, needs a reminder of its minimum obligations.