Big four dominate

The Big Four audit firms - Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC - saw their fee pool increase by 30 per cent in 2015-16, according to an analysis by Prime Database. Between them, the four firms handled 401 assignments, a fourth of listed companies on the NSE. "Their dominance is even stronger in the Nifty-500 basket wherein they handled 234 of the 500 audits or 47 per cent of the total," says Prime. Interestingly, rotation of auditors among listed companies gathered momentum in FY16. As many as 178 companies changed their auditors from 2014-15 to 2015-16. According to the new Com-panies Act, Indian comp-anies cannot have the same auditors for more than 10 years. The rule came into effect from April 2014 and companies had three years' time to change auditors. According to Prime, to meet this requirement, tenures of 99 auditors at 94 firms shall expire in 2017-18 and 172 auditors at 168 firms in 2018-19