From 2005, IAS 39: Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement required UK banks to support loan-loss provisioning with objective evidence that losses had been incurred, and thereby eliminated general loan-loss provisioning. It has been argued that the IAS 39 incurred-loss method of...

This paper examines the effects of audit firm mergers and the demise of Andersens on market concentration, competitiveness and audit pricing in the UK. Our results indicate that the large audit firms increased their market share between 1985 and 2002 by merging and expanding into new sectors....