More companies are choosing to abandon the Big Four Accounting firms as their auditors. Let me pose two questions to discuss (feel free to add more items):

What reasons can you think of to account for this trend?

Whats the down side if any to abandoning the Big Four?

Will the Big Four be able to stem the flow of defections? According to CFO.com, they claim to be doing so.

See Big 4 Stems Exodus of Clients to Smaller Firms.

http://ww2.cfo.com/accounting-tax/2008/01/big-four-stems-exodus-to-smaller-auditors/