Mazars UK has formed an alliance with the
District Audit Service (DA) Partnership in its bid for the UK Audit
Commission tenders.

DA Partnership managing director Gareth Davies
is leading the bid by the employee-owned organisation, which hopes
to win a maximum 40% of work available for a single bidder.

Mazars is providing financial backing to the
DA team and will take a share in the new company if the bid is
successful.

Davies, who is taking a leave of absence from
as the Audit Commission’s head of audit to work on the bid, said
they plan to “create a vibrant new employee-owned firm to offer
high quality audit and advisory services across the sector”.

Davies told International Accounting
Bulletin that “the alternative to not bidding on behalf of
this new enterprise is to essentially see the organisation broken
up and taken over by, probably, the big firms and this organisation
goes back a long way…So we think there’s still something about it
which is worth building on rather than just see it disappear”.

Mazars UK public interest markets head David
Herbinet said the DA’s decision to work with Mazars “is a
significant endorsement of our expertise and integrity and creates
an offer for the public sector that provides the best of both
commercial and public sector auditing expertise and skill
sets”.  

Davies said that in the event of the DA
Partnership being awarded a tender, Mazars will continue to provide
financial support by sharing the infrastructure costs. 

If the tender is successful, DA Partnership
said it will allocate some of the profits to a charitable
foundation, which will conduct research into improving financial
reporting.

The commission, that is being scraped in less
then a year as part of the UK governments spending cuts, employs
2,000 people and is responsible for audits of public services such
as the National Health Service.

The deadline for submission of tenders is
December 2011 for principal body procurement and January 2012 for
small body procurement.  The commission expects to award
contracts in February 2012 for a start date in October 2012.

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