EY Leads on Public Company Audits

Ernst & Young outpaced the rest of the Big Four in auditing the most public companies last year, according to a new ranking.

The research firm Audit Analytics ranked the top 10 firms by public company count and found that EY led the way with auditing 994 public companies (14.3 percent of the market), followed by PricewaterhouseCoopers with 717 companies (10.3 percent), KPMG with 692 companies (10.0 percent), and Deloitte & Touche with 664 companies (9.6 percent) in fourth place.

The Big Four were followed by BDO USA with 291 public company audits (4.2 percent), and Grant Thornton with 259 companies (3.7 percent). Altogether the Global Six, as Audit Analytics refers to them, audited 96.8 percent of the 2,005 large accelerated filers, the biggest companies that file their financials with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In seventh place was MaloneBailey with 221 public company audit clients (3.2 percent), followed by Marcum with 133 (1.9 percent). RSM US, formerly known as McGladrey, took the ninth spot on the list with 129 public company audits (also 1.9 percent), down from eighth on last year’s ranking of the top 10. In tenth place was Anton & Chia, which displaced Crowe Horwath, with 112 public company audits (1.6 percent of the market).

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