The Big Four: The Curious Past and Perilous Future of the Global Accounting Monopoly
Ian D. Gow2018

With staffs that are collectively larger than the Russian army and combined revenues of over $130 billion a year, the Big Four accounting firms--Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG--are a keystone of global commerce. But leading scholar Ian Gow and award-winning author Stuart Kells warn that a house of cards may be about to fall.

Stretching back to the Medicis in Renaissance Florence, this book is a fascinating story of wealth, power, and luck. The founders of the Big Four lived surprisingly colorful lives. Samuel Price, for example, married his own niece. Between the world wars, Nicholas Waterhouse collected postage stamps while also hosting decadent parties in his fashionable London home.