In order to ensure the smooth progress of the merger of Chinese accounting firms and the healthy development in the future, the following points should attract the attention of relevant professional regulatory authorities and accounting firms.

1. The selection criteria of the market mechanism should be followed

Under the current situation, the Ministry of Finance and the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants need to adopt appropriate policies and measures to promote and encourage cooperation between firms of merger. Vigorously promote the reasonable flow of production factors within the industry, improve the functions of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants, create good conditions for firm mergers, and improve the market efficiency of firm mergers. However, it is worth noting that these measures must be based on market mechanisms, that is, to ensure that accounting firms can independently select appropriate merger and reorganization targets on the basis of equality, voluntariness, and consultation, and must not implement government-forced alliances and engage in " "Lalang Pei". Otherwise, it will seriously affect the future harmonious operation and further expansion of the firm, because after all, the CPA industry is a highly human capital-intensive service industry, and the affinity, enthusiasm and sense of responsibility of the employees are the key factors that determine the success or failure of the firm. During the merger process, even if it is necessary to rely on the administrative authority of government departments to speed up the structural adjustment of the audit market, government departments can only formulate strict market access standards (such as the financial department and the securities regulatory department jointly issuing a document to improve listed companies). Access standards for the audit market, such as requiring firms to have 50 certified public accountants with securities qualifications, more than 5 years of experience in auditing listed companies and good records, etc.) to guide and encourage firms to move towards scaled operations through mergers and reorganizations , and continuously increase market share.

2. The organizational form after the merger should be reasonably determined

According to the provisions of Articles 23 and 24 of the "CPA Law", China is only allowed to establish partnership accounting firms and Limited liability accounting firm. A limited liability accounting firm is a corporate organizational form in which a certified public accountant subscribes to the firm's shares and assumes limited liability for the firm with the subscribed shares. A limited liability accounting firm shall bear limited liability for its debts with all its assets. This organizational form undoubtedly reduces the highly restrictive effect of risk liability on the professional behavior of certified public accountants and weakens the personal responsibility of certified public accountants. Limited liability accounting firms are unable to meet public expectations to a considerable extent, and their scale expansion can only be limited to a certain extent and scope. The "Guiding Opinions on Several Issues in Expanding the Scale of Accounting Firms" issued by the Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic of China on March 24, 2000 does not advocate the adoption of the organizational form of a limited liability accounting firm, but advocates the organizational form of a partnership.

Partnership firms bear unlimited liability, and the interests of the partners (including human capital investment) are closely related to the firm's operating performance and development destiny. It is also necessary to enhance risk, responsibility, quality and brand awareness. Because of this, the partnership system has long been the mainstream organizational form of accounting firms in Western countries, and is also advocated by the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants and many people in the accounting and auditing circles. However, this article believes that partnership is not the best choice for Chinese accounting firms. The reason is that the Chinese people have a strong traditional concept of "better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix" and have poor team awareness. The implementation of a partnership system is not convenient for the firm to grow. At the same time, China lacks a personal property registration system, making it difficult for partners in a firm to truly assume unlimited liability. In fact, even in Western countries, due to the impact of the audit "litigation explosion" and the troubles of excessive legal liability, the limitations of external financing, and the increasing difficulty of internal business decision-making and management after scale expansion, many large accounting firms have After the 1990s, the partnership system has been gradually changed to a limited liability partnership system. The firm bears limited liability for its debts with all its assets. Each partner bears unlimited liability for the results of his or her personal practice. Partners do not bear joint and several liability for each other. . Combining the advantages of the two organizational forms to form a new firm organizational form will undoubtedly be beneficial to the firm's expansion and development.

3. A good internal operating mechanism should be established

The merger itself is not an end, it is just a way to seek better development. Therefore, the improvement of personnel, finance, and professional standards must be achieved as soon as possible after the merger. Integrate unification and corporate culture, formulate feasible development strategies (especially market strategies including business types, service areas, customer orientation, etc.), design corresponding incentive and restriction mechanisms, and establish effective quality control and auditing Risk prevention system. If you are greedy for bigness and quickness and fight for qualifications, you will easily fall into a situation of becoming bigger but not stronger, and even less successful.

4. Have a correct understanding of the trend of mergers

In fact, firms of different sizes have different service scopes and capabilities. Large firms have more staff and fewer services. It has a complete range of products and can provide comprehensive accounting, auditing and management consulting services to large enterprises. Medium-sized firms mainly provide related services to small and medium-sized clients, but also take care of a small number of larger clients. Small firms have fewer employees, the largest number, and basically no branches. They usually serve smaller clients and non-profit organizations. They are more suitable for providing agency accounting, tax consulting and other services, and have greater operational flexibility.

The merger is not intended to eliminate a large number of small and medium-sized firms, leaving only a few giants in the entire industry, but to form a coexistence of large, medium and small firms. However, the statutory audit business is composed of a very small number of high-quality, strong and reputable firms. The industry structure controlled by the firm. As mentioned before, small and medium-sized accounting firms also have their own characteristics and advantages. Even in the United States, where audits of listed securities companies and other types of important auditing services are completely controlled by the "Big Five" accounting firms, regional and local small and medium-sized accounting firms have their own characteristics and advantages. The firm still has its own activity space and competitive platform, and has strong vitality. Therefore, it is important to remember that mergers cannot be blind and must be based on the specific circumstances of firms of different sizes.

5. Firm mergers should be used as an opportunity to cultivate a CPA market structure that combines hierarchical competition and collaboration

After clean-up and rectification, there are still more than 6,000 firms in China Therefore, what kind of CPA market structure should they form? Due to the coexistence of large, medium and small firms, it should be possible to form a structure based on the universal participation of large, medium and small firms, so that the industry will gradually appear to be group firms and The trend of competition among key firms. At the same time, competition among firms within the industry is characterized by stratification. Large backbone firms compete in high-level, large-market competition, while small and medium-sized firms compete in small-market, low-level competition. In this way, on the one hand, large, medium and small firms have competitive pressure, and on the other hand, due to the staggered competition space, it is conducive to reducing the waste of resources in the industry and truly realizing the unification of multi-level and multi-level competition and economies of scale.