Big 4's dominance: Local companies call for level playing field
In recent Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) investigations into the affiliates of multinational professional services firms EY, Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG, the firms have managed to get court stays against disciplinary proceedings by ICAI's disciplinary committee after years of investigation, their domestic rivals said.
In a case against EY affiliate firms SV Ghatalia and SR Batliboi, which began in 2013, the ICAI disciplinary committee issued an order on April 26 that barred and fined the two partners and directed them to sever all associations with the global entity, EY Global. The partners in question had retired a few years prior.
The firms subsequently obtained a stay order from the Delhi High Court (HC) against the actions of the disciplinary committee. «At the point the investigation was started, the disciplinary committee was absolutely right in calling out professional misconduct in their order against a multinational firm,» said Amarjit Chopra, former president of ICAI.
«All multinational audit firms (MAFs) broke the rules then. Later, they might have separated audit and consulting firms, but not then. They were in clear violation of ICAI regulations when investigations started,» he said.
According to domestic audit firms, multinational audit firms have previously skirted around ICAI regulations that prohibit advertisements, payments for referral fees to global entities, utilisation of global resources, sharing any form of profit or fee with global entities, and maintaining control
