Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand have some of the biggest Irish public companies as clients, but there must be some doubt whether the merged group will be able to retain all the clients, especially in the financial sector.
Coopers & Lybrand is the current auditor for Allied Irish Banks, while Price Waterhouse is auditor to its main competitor, Bank of Ireland. It is unlikely that a merged accountancy group would be able to retain the Republic's two biggest banks as clients, a development which will be closely watched by the other accountancy firms.
Last year, Price Waterhouse received £700,000 in audit fees and £3.6 million in non-audit fees from Bank of Ireland, while Coopers & Lybrand received £1.1 million in audit fees and £400,000 in non-audit fees from AIB.
Non-audit fees usually arise from consultancy services on acquisitions and other corporate activities.
Otherwise, there is no obvious reason why the proposed merger would present any potential conflict of interest difficulties.
Other than AIB, Coopers & Lybrand's biggest clients are the newly-merged Avonmore/Waterford, James Crean, DCC, Greencore and Golden Vale.
Apart from Bank of Ireland, Price Waterhouse's biggest public clients are Fitzwilton, Hibernian Group, Independent Newspapers, IWP and Waterford Wedgwood.
