British regulator may open market dominance probe

BRITAIN’S antitrust regulator is to decide this month whether to open a probe into market dominance by the “big four” accounting firms, focusing on bank loans that force borrowers to use the largest auditors.

A House of Lords committee investigating the financial crisis said in a March report that the firms, which audit 99 of the 100 largest British companies, should be probed by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to determine whether their market dominance wrongfully limits choice.

The OFT would help determine whether loan terms unfairly favour Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG, said Robert Bell, an antitrust lawyer in London with Speechly Bircham. The agency, which has kept the industry under review since 2002, will make a decision on the probe later this month, said spokeswoman Kasia Reardon.