Private Funds Audited by a Big Four Firm (share, Form ADV)

## What this measures

Every adviser that manages a private fund (a pooled vehicle relying on the 3(c)(1) or 3(c)(7) exclusions of the Investment Company Act) describes each fund in Form ADV Schedule D, Section 7.B.(1): its type (hedge, private equity, venture capital, real estate, securitized asset, liquidity or other), gross asset value, number of beneficial owners, auditing firms and, if it filed one, its Form D file number. The SEC releases every Form ADV filing in its FOIA Form ADV data through 2024; filings from 2025 are in the monthly Form ADV filing data files on the SEC's adviser disclosure site (adviserinfo.sec.gov, run by FINRA). Palanor reads every Schedule D from November 2011 to September 2026 and, for each fiscal year, takes each adviser's annual updating amendment for that year (the amendment due within 90 days of the fiscal year end). This is the percentage of all reported private funds for which at least one auditing firm named (question 23) is PwC, Deloitte, EY or KPMG (any member firm). By fiscal year, 2012 to 2025.

## Why it matters

An audit by a large firm is one of the checks institutional investors look for. The share shows how much of the private fund universe sits with the Big Four, and how fast smaller funds without audits, or with smaller auditors, are growing.

## How to read it

Higher means more of the funds have a Big Four auditor. It has fallen as the number of small venture capital vehicles (often unaudited or audited by smaller firms) has risen; read it with the share of assets, which stays much higher because the largest funds use the Big Four.

## What it does not say

The last complete fiscal year is 2025: annual amendments are due within 90 days of the fiscal year end, so fiscal 2026 is added once they are filed in 2027. Advisers that registered or withdrew mid-year without an annual amendment for the year are not in that year. A fund advised by two advisers can appear twice. Figures are as the advisers filed them: gross asset values of $1 trillion or more, or of $10 billion or more that are over 1.5 times the adviser's own reported assets or over 20 times the fund's value in its other years, are treated as typing errors and left out. Auditor names are free text; Palanor matches the four firms' names and common abbreviations.

## Source

Palanor calculation from the SEC FOIA Form ADV data (www.sec.gov/foia-services/frequently-requested-documents/form-adv-data), Form ADV Part 1A and Schedule D for registered and exempt reporting advisers, filings 2011-11-05 to 2024-12-31 (U.S. government work in the public domain), and the monthly Form ADV filing data files on adviserinfo.sec.gov for filings 2025-01-01 to 2026-09-30, retrieved 2026-10-19: BrokerCheck data (FINRA, brokercheck.finra.org), used for investor protection; use is subject to the BrokerCheck Terms of Use (brokercheck.finra.org/terms). Report errors to support@palanor.com. Reloaded by Palanor once a year.