Traduction de «Les Quatre Grands » (Français → Anglais) :

The consultation is structured along four broad policy objectives related to FinTech:

33. Stresses the crucial role of large accounting firms, including the ‘Big Four’, in the design and marketing of rulings and tax avoidance schemes that exploit mismatches between national legislations; stresses that those firms, which seem to derive a considerable amount of their revenue from tax services, to dominate most Member States’ auditing markets and to prevail in global tax advising services, constitute a narrow oligopoly; considers that such a situation cannot continue without damaging the functioning of the single market in the fields of activity of the ‘Big Four’; draws attention to the conflict of interest resulting from ...[+++] the juxtaposition, within the same firms, of tax advice and consulting activities intended, on the one hand, for tax administrations and, on the other, for MNCs’ tax planning services, which exploit the weaknesses of national tax laws; takes the view that good practices in this respect must be promoted and that existing codes of conduct should be improved; questions, nevertheless, the effectiveness of corporate codes of conduct and corporate social responsibility policies in tackling this issue; underlines the fact that tax rulings have become, in the EU and worldwide, a common business practice, not only in order to obtain legal certainty or advantageous tax deals, but also in cases where legislative provisions do not allow any room for interpretation; is concerned by estimations from the tax advice industry that a mere 50 % chance of being lawful is sufficient for a tax planning scheme to be recommended to clients ;

Thirdly, ACTA provides a balanced agreement, which replies to the four main concerns expressed by Members, for the following four reasons.

As you said, Mr President, it is late, and so I will restrict myself to four points on the four main types of observations that have been made, regarding the economy, the climate package, political issues and, finally, the Treaty.

As I said earlier, the proposal for a directive provides for protection from discrimination on four basic discrimination grounds, but giving equal importance to all four of them does not mean that provisions concerning all these types of discrimination are equal.

Can a big listed company (listed on one of the bigger stock exchanges fully involved in such a consolidation process) survive without a rating of one or more of the 3 major rating agencies, without the services of top investment banks accompanying a major acquisition or merger, or without one of the 4 big audit firms for their financial statements?