As chief executives from around the world began to talk about the challenges facing the profession I was struck by how many mentioned audit.

Just to share some of the themes with you - in emerging economies, audits are being conducted against a backdrop which is very different from that in which mature economies operate.

When an opinion is expressed, should the reader be aware of this and not assume in the absence of any specific comment that it is similar no matter what market the audit was carried out in?

For these economies, there is also a strong sense that ISA's are too complicated, that smaller firms just can't cope and that audits will only be carried out by firms with scale.

Compare this to the mature economies and I include the UK in this group, where there is evidence of a decline in the number of audit firms. This is down to several factors including, regulation, consolidation and a diminishing reward for the service.

In the last ten years we have seen the number of registered audit firms with the ICAEW fall by half. I think that the next ten years may see further reshaping of the market as more and more firms do not include audit as a business service.

To date I have been a lone voice in raising my concerns about the future of audit and what the profession needs to do to adapt to this, Now the CCAB in the UK have agreed to share data on this from which we can then draw our own conclusions. What do you think?

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