France is unique because of its joint audit requirement that all public interest entities (PIEs) – which include publicly listed entities – must engage at least two independent accounting firms to perform an annual audit. Many cite this requirement as the reason France has a more diverse and competitive audit market than other countries. The Big Four accounting firms are collectively engaged in 55.5% of all French engagements, down 1.5 percentage points from the previous year.

In this article, Audit Analytics further examines France’s audit market of the top companies for fiscal year 2021.