The Big Four global accounting firms are going head to head with investment banks in China, snatching up a record number of outbound transactions from the country.
The companies — PwC, EY, Deloitte and KPMG — advised on $8.6bn worth of cross-border acquisitions by Chinese groups last year, up nearly fourfold from the $2.2bn the year before, according to data from Thomson Reuters.
The figure represents just a small chunk of the total $220bn that Chinese companies spent on overseas transactions last year. But the increase in the size and number of deals that some of the accounting groups have been lead advisers on demonstrates the inroads they have made in investment banking.