COMMENTARY on The Challenge of the Mergers.

This article presents a commentary on the accounting-related challenges of corporate mergers. The emergence of the European Community requires that firms weak there, either in consulting or auditing, find means to quickly achieve strength. It is forecasted that the so-called "Big Eight," top eight companies listed in the Fortune 500 list, will soon become "Big Five" due to the rise in mergers in recent years. Various reasons are given for this rush to merge, some of them reminiscent of the reasons given during the fifties and sixties for the development of industrial conglomerates. The smallest of the Big Five will, reportedly, have more than five times the number of the clients of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as the sixth largest firm and the sales of the companies the sixth firm audits will be less than one-sixth of those of the fifth firm. Problems of these mergers, suggestively, will require virtually everyone within each of the organizations to reexamine his expectations for the future and in many cases adjust them radically. As these enterprises grow, particularly in consulting work, their capital needs increase accordingly. Some of the mergers are supposed to produce difficult professional problems and an increase in competition.