Abstract:

This study aims to analyze the influence of the main factors that lead the large audit firms to the clients’ acceptance. For this purpose, it was extracted a sample formed of the first 100 multinational companies present in top 500 Fortune, from 2011, and which were audited by Big 4 companies. In the study there were proposed three work hypotheses (the individualization, based on some financial and non-financial indicators, of the profile of the client of one of the large audit companies, members of Big 4, the classification of companies according to their belonging to a certain audit company, member of Big 4 and the probability for the companies taken in the study to be accepted by one of the companies members of Big 4) and for their testing it was proposed a series of factor variables (object of activity, financial leverage and profitability rates). For the analysis of data, the statistical software, SPSS 19.0, was used. The main results of the study indicate that: the prestige of the client company, reflected through the position occupied in Top 500 Fortune, represents a determining factor in taking the decision of being or not accepted to be audited by some of the Big 4 companies; at the level of the analyzed sample, the audit companies were specialized on certain fields, accepting the clients according to this criterion; the audit companies members of Big 4 refuse to audit companies which cannot continue their activity in a predictable horizon of time.