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Big 4

The "Big Four auditors" are the largest multinational accountancy firms. In order of size (revenue and employees) the Big 4 members are:

The Big 4 accountancy firms can all trace their history back to Europe, predominately the United Kingdom.

However, due to the dominant size of the United States' economy, the offices of the Big 4 accountancy firms based in the United States have always generated more revenue than the rest of the Big 4 accountancy firms' offices in the world combined.

The Big 4 has a long history of mergers, with eight accountancy firms originally dominating the markets. In the 1970’s the firms were called the Big 8, and consisted of;

The Big 8 themselves were the results of earlier mergers.

In 1989 the Big 8 became the Big 6, with the merger of Price Waterhouse with Coopers & Lybrand to form Price Waterhouse Coopers.

9 years later, in 1998, another series of mergers amongst the firms took place forming the Big 5.

The indictment of Arthur Anderson in 2002, for falsifying financial statements, led to the Big 5 becoming the Big 4.