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Comment by purpleblue | Hacker News Reader

Armanino is not a top firm. If you're not using Big 4, there's a reason.

There are plenty of reasons for not using a Big 4 their prices being one. They are not the be all and end all of auditing.

If you have billions in reserves and operate all over the world, you might not go with Big 4, but you also aren't going to take your business to a regional branch office in South Africa.

Auditors are not for your company. Auditors are for your investors. Auditors are not your friends. If you are investing a large amount of money in a company, and they are using a non-Big 4 firm, then any problems are on you.

I've routinely joked to my wife that her life would be much easier if they fired their auditors and went with BDO or some smaller auditing that they could bully around. The thing is, that's exactly how companies with weak accounting think, and FTX proves that point.

It’s not about auditors bring your friends. The Big 4 are only marginally better than their competitors and the Anderson scandal proved definitely that they are not in themselves a proof that things are fine. The idea that there is something fishy with companies not using the Big 4 as auditors is just wrong.

That's mostly fair, but the Big 4 are very good at billing partner prices for junior work and some of the mid-tier companies do excellent work for a much better rate.

I think it just depends how well a company's CFO knows the firm partners from the last round of golf as to whether they will go easy on your audit.

All the big 4 have been caught turning a blind eye over the last few years to win big contracts. Wirecard, Carillion and NMC Health all spring to mind for me in Europe. If i have 3 committed to memory there are many more.

All the "audit" firms are corrupt, regulation has utterly failed.

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