Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com