Who runs this place? ‘Policy development’ and the Big 4

We just wrote a blog about tech giants, via a Financial Times article suggesting that they risk suffering reputational damage that could eventually be as bad as the reputational damage suffered by big banks.

Well, there’s another category that risks suffering the same fate in future. The Big Four Accountants.

This video from Spinwatch is from 2013, but it is worth repeating because not much has changed: in fact, we reckon that matters have got even worse since then. The Big Four’s influence (one might say tentacles), and their conflicts of interest, are everywhere. 

Our pull-out quote:

‘In an era when the government is focusing on . . . tax avoidance, and where there has been considerable media coverage on particular ‘tax avoiders,’ policy development offers a low risk alternative.’

Translation: for a fee, we will lobby to get the laws changed in your favour. If you want your tax dodging legalised, then come to us.

Policy development. It sounds so innocuous, doesn’t it. And the shamelessness of some of it is just stunning.

Read the full Spinwatch report here.

The UK, which is the subject of this report, admittedly suffers a particularly bad case of Big Four-itis, but as we have mentioned, they are everyhere.

We can’t emphasise strongly enough how everywhere-ish they are.