Strong competition among audit companies and power to achieve higher audit fees: Who is at the forefront?

Abstract

The aim of the research is to determine if the audit fees are statistically significantly different between the audit companies and vary, depending on the size of client and audit company. We find that for large auditees the average audit fees of the Big 4 Group did not statistically significantly deviate from normative audit fees, even surpass them, but not statistically significant. On average, small audit firms when auditing large auditees do not meet the predicted normative audit fees, and this deviation is statistically significant. Also, we confirm that the Big 4 auditing companies (KPMG, E & Y, Deloitte and PwC) were, statistically, significantly more likely to charge higher audit fees than a small auditing company would charge. The paper contributes to the literature to give users a clear indication about what average audit fees are typical of the Slovenian audit companies and which audit company is at the forefront.