ABSTRACT
Any analysis of the changing nature of professionalism in the 1990s is incomplete without incorporating accountancy. This chapter will examine the growth and changing nature of accountancy over the past decade or so in the UK. Accountants appear to have been one of the main beneficiaries of the 1980s. For example, between 1985 and 1989 the largest eight accountancy firms (mergers have since reduced this number to six) grew at rates of between 112 per cent and 206 per cent in terms of their fee income and between 24 per cent and 73 per cent in terms of staff (Hanlon, 1994: table 2.2); over the course of the whole decade, the Big Six expanded their fee income sixfold (London Economics Ltd, 1994:23). In 1993 the Big Six accountancy firms earned £2.5 billion between them (London Economics Ltd, 1994:1). These six international firms now dominate the accountancy market internationally, controlling 56 per cent of leading company audits, or 74 per cent of the audit market in terms of total company sales, or 65 per cent of company audits in terms of assets (Leyshon et al., 1987: table 3).
