Who Audits Apple?

Which accounting firm audits apple? Did you know that Apple is the largest company in the world. You probably did. That is probably one of the reasons you are trying to figure out who their auditor is.

Maybe you are an accounting student looking to get on the account and you want to join the accounting firm that audits them and hope that you can get on the engagement. Either way, you came to the right place.

Ernst and Young is the accounting firm that is charged with auditing Apple’s public financial statements. Ernst & Young is one of the largest accounting firms in the world. They are one of the big 4 accounting firms. They are not the largest accounting firm in the world though. Deloitte is the largest accounting firm.

Apple’s stock ticker is AAPL. They have a market cap of almost $800 billion. They are slowly approaching the trillion dollar threshold. They would be the first company to hit that mark. That would be a prestigious designation for them.

It would also be a prestigious designation for EY to say that they audit a trillion dollar firm. Since Apple is worth almost a trillion, how much does EY get each year for providing comfort over an 800 billion balance sheet? It has to be at least a $100 million a year right? Wrong. Apple does not actually pay EY that much. They paid EY only $13.5 million in audit fees in 2016. In 2015, they only paid 12.4 million. Apparently this must be a very low risk audit if the fees are that low. I doubt EY cares though. The prestige of auditing Apple is worth the low fee.

Ernst and Young took over the audit of Apple back in 2009 after a competitive bidding process. Prior to that, KPMG was the auditor of Apple. Apple said they didn’t change auditors because of a disagreement. They merely changed auditors because they of a competitive bidding process.