IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/euract/v10y2001i4p843-867.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The emergence of the Big Five in Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • Eva Wallerstedt

Abstract

The accounting profession is dominated by the Big Five, which in 1999 and in order of revenue size were PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, KPMG, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Arthur Andersen. A specific feature of the profession in Sweden is that three firms dominate the market -; PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and KPMG - while Arthur Andersen and Deloitte & Touche are of less relative importance compared with their standing in other countries. The objective of this paper is to explore the development of the auditing profession in Sweden 1912-99, in order to find the growth strategies that generated today's structure. Particular attention will be paid to the gradual emergence of the Big Five. The Big Three auditing firms in Sweden in 1999 engaged 55% (1,105 authorized public accountants) of the total population of authorized public accountants. However, the proportion of 'sole practitioners', i.e. firms with no more than one authorized public accountant, was 81% in the same year. An overwhelming part of the auditing firms in Sweden are thus very small. It seems quite obvious that the activities within these small firms in many important ways differ from the activities within the medium-sized and big firms. A common feature of the firms that subsequently became the Big Three in Sweden is that they were established at a very early stage. There seems to have been a first-mover advantage in the auditing profession. The Big Three firms have adopted different growth strategies. They have increased in size by organic growth, by establishing or buying branch offices in different parts of Sweden or by merging with large firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Eva Wallerstedt, 2001. "The emergence of the Big Five in Sweden," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(4), pages 843-867.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:10:y:2001:i:4:p:843-867
    DOI: 10.1080/09638180120069133
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09638180120069133
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09638180120069133?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthews, Derek & Anderson, Malcolm & Edwards, John Richard, 1998. "The Priesthood of Industry: The Rise of the Professional Accountant in British Management," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198289609.
    2. Christopher W. Nobes (ed.), 1996. "International Accounting," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1102.
    3. Merete Christiansen & Anne Loft, 1992. "Big players and small players," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(2), pages 277-301.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Larsson, Bengt, 2005. "Auditor regulation and economic crime policy in Sweden, 1965-2000," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 127-144, February.
    2. Malcolm Anderson, 2002. "Accounting History publications 2001," Accounting History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 505-512.
    3. I. De Beelde & N. Gonthier-Besacier & A. Mikol, 2006. "The Introduction Of The Anglo-American Audit Firms In France," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 06/392, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fiona Anderson-Gough & Christopher Grey & Keith Robson, 2002. "Accounting professionals and the accounting profession: linking conduct and context," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 41-56.
    2. Walker, Stephen P., 2000. "Benign sacerdotalist or pious assailant. The rise of the professional accountant in British management," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 313-323, April.
    3. Derek Matthews & Michael Peel, 2003. "Audit fee determinants and the large auditor premium in 1900," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 137-155.
    4. Qiang Guo & Christopher Koch & Aiyong Zhu, 2017. "Joint audit, audit market structure, and consumer surplus," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 1595-1627, December.
    5. Nicolas Berland & Trevor Boyns, 2002. "The development of budgetary control in France and Britain from the 1920s to the 1960s: a comparison," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 329-356.
    6. Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo, 2017. "Between Novelty and Fashion: Risk Management and the Adoption of Computers in Retail Banking," Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance, in: Korinna Schönhärl (ed.), Decision Taking, Confidence and Risk Management in Banks from Early Modernity to the 20th Century, pages 189-207, Palgrave Macmillan.
    7. John Edwards & Roy Chandler & Malcolm Anderson, 1999. "The ‘public auditor’: an experiment in effective accountability," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 183-197.
    8. McPhail, Ken & Paisey, Catriona & Paisey, Nicholas J., 2010. "Class, social deprivation and accounting education in Scottish schools: Implications for the reproduction of the accounting profession and practice," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 31-50.
    9. Ignace de Beedle & Nathalie Gonthier-Besacier & Alain Mikol, 2003. "Le développement des grands cabinets anglo-saxons d'audit en France," Post-Print halshs-00582758, HAL.
    10. SAKO Mari & KUBO Katsuyuki, 2019. "Professionals on Corporate Boards: How do they affect the bottom line?," Discussion papers 19010, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    11. R. H. Parker, 2001. "European languages of account," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(1), pages 133-147.
    12. Marc Flandreau & Geoffroy Legentilhomme, 2022. "Cyberpunk Victoria: The credibility of computers and the first digital revolution, 1848–83," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(4), pages 1083-1119, November.
    13. Sian, S. & Verma, S., 2021. "Bridging the divide: The rise of the Indian Accountant from 1900 to 1932," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(2).
    14. Kotb, Amr & Roberts, Clare & Sian, S., 2012. "E-business audit: Advisory jurisdiction or occupational invasion?," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 468-482.
    15. Andrew Popp, 2000. "Specialty production, personal capitalism and auditors' reports: Mintons Ltd., c.1870-1900," Accounting History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(3), pages 347-369.
    16. John Edwards & Stephen Walker, 2007. "Accountants in late 19th century Britain: a spatial, demographic and occupational profile," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(1), pages 63-89.
    17. Anderson, Malcolm & Walker, Stephen P., 2009. "‘All sorts and conditions of men’: The social origins of the founders of the ICAEW," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 31-45.
    18. Samsonova, Anna, 2009. "Local sites of globalisation: A look at the development of a legislative framework for auditing in Russia," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 528-552.
    19. Mennicken, Andrea, 2010. "From inspection to auditing: audit and markets as linked ecologies," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 27054, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    20. Napier, Christopher J., 2006. "Accounts of change: 30 years of historical accounting research," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 31(4-5), pages 445-507.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:10:y:2001:i:4:p:843-867. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REAR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.