PARTICULARITIES CONCERNING THE BENEFICIARIES OF AUDIT SERVICES PROVIDED BY THE BIG 4 COMPANIES: EVIDENCE FROM ROMANIA

This study aims to explore some particularities concerning the Romanian auditedentities which are oriented mainly towards contracting audit services from the largest companiesproviding auditing services (Big 4 companies). The assessment criteria taken into consideration forthe differentiation of the beneficiaries of the audit services, at Romanian level are related tocompetitiveness, to the structure of share capital and to the nature of the audited entities‘management. There was taken into consideration the impact differentiation of each indicator, bycoefficients of importance. If at international level, previous results show a supremacy for the Big 4audit services providers, not the same situation confirms at Romanian level. The results show thatonly 18% of the sampled audited entities benefit from audit services provided by the Big 4,irrespective of their level of competitiveness, the structure of share capital or the structure ofmanagement.