Lecture

Audit Firms: The Big Four Dominance

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In course

FIN-419: Ethical behavior in the financial industry

We will focus on ethical dilemmas facing professionals in the financial industry. Cases based on real events will illustrate various kinds of transgressions. We will study what regulators and firms have put in place to mitigate these issues and propose som ...

Description

This lecture delves into the dominance of the 'Big Four' audit firms - KPMG, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and Ernst Young (EY) - in the global auditing, accounting, and corporate consulting industry. It explores the history of these firms, their repeated failures in auditing, and their involvement in profit-shifting practices. The lecture also discusses the substantial profit margins of for-profit exchanges, the conflicts of interest between auditing and consulting, and the impact of high-frequency trading (HFT) on financial markets, shedding light on the secretive world of HFT players and strategies. Additionally, it covers the role of Securities Information Processors (SIPs) and order types in trading environments.

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Related concepts (31)

Program trading

Program trading is a type of trading in securities, usually consisting of baskets of fifteen stocks or more that are executed by a computer program simultaneously based on predetermined conditions. Program trading is often used by hedge funds and other institutional investors pursuing index arbitrage or other arbitrage strategies.

Electronic trading platform

In finance, an electronic trading platform also known as an online trading platform, is a computer software program that can be used to place orders for financial products over a network with a financial intermediary. Various financial products can be traded by the trading platform, over a communication network with a financial intermediary or directly between the participants or members of the trading platform.

Algorithmic trading

Algorithmic trading is a method of executing orders using automated pre-programmed trading instructions accounting for variables such as time, price, and volume. This type of trading attempts to leverage the speed and computational resources of computers relative to human traders. In the twenty-first century, algorithmic trading has been gaining traction with both retail and institutional traders. A study in 2019 showed that around 92% of trading in the Forex market was performed by trading algorithms rather than humans.

Financial market

A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities and derivatives at low transaction costs. Some of the securities include stocks and bonds, raw materials and precious metals, which are known in the financial markets as commodities. The term "market" is sometimes used for what are more strictly exchanges, organizations that facilitate the trade in financial securities, e.g., a stock exchange or commodity exchange.

Automated trading system

An automated trading system (ATS), a subset of algorithmic trading, uses a computer program to create buy and sell orders and automatically submits the orders to a market center or exchange. The computer program will automatically generate orders based on predefined set of rules using a trading strategy which is based on technical analysis, advanced statistical and mathematical computations or input from other electronic sources. These automated trading systems are mostly employed by investment banks or hedge funds, but are also available to private investors using simple online tools.

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