Big Four
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The phrase Big Four has multiple meanings:
- Big Four can refer to:
- The Big Four auditors, the four largest international public accountancy firms.
- The 'Big Four' outlaw motorcycle gangs.
- A nickname for a railroad in the United States of America officially called the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (later absorbed by the New York Central Railroad).
- Big Four record labels - The four major media giants which dominate the global music market: EMI, Sony-BMG, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group. These were known as the Big Five before Sony and BMG merged.
- Name given to the four biggest banks in Ireland, these are: Allied Irish Banks, Bank of Ireland, National Irish Bank (Northern Bank in Northern Ireland) and Ulster Bank.
- Name traditionally given to the four biggest banks in the United Kingdom. For many decades these were: Lloyds (now Lloyds TSB); Natwest, (now part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group); Barclays Bank; and Midland Bank (taken over by HSBC and rebranded). HBOS, which was formed by a merger between the Bank of Scotland and the former Building Society Halifax, is larger than Lloyds TSB by both assets and market capitalisation, so the term is obsolete, but it is still used a great deal by the media.
- Name given to the four biggest banks in Australia, these are: the National Australia Bank, the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and ANZ.
- Name given to the four large banks in the People's Republic of China, these are the Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China.
- The four major U.S. television networks: ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox
- The four major IRC Networks: Quakenet, Undernet, EFNet, IRCNet (formerly Dalnet, Undernet, EFNet, IRCNet) Dalnet lost most of their users in a massive ddos campaign. just as quakenet were starting to become really large.
- The Big Four was the collective name given to four railroad magnates in the western U.S.: Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker
- The Big Four (novel) was an Agatha Christie book
- The four largest railway companies in the United Kingdom in the period 1923-1948 were known as the Big Four. These were the Great Western Railway, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, the London and North Eastern Railway and the Southern Railway. In 1948 these companies were nationalised to form British Railways.
- The four largest eikaiwa or English education organisations in Japan; Nova, AEON, GEOS & ECC
- The four japanese motorcycle makers: Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha
- The four most popular and arguably influential Thrash Metal bands of the 80's: Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax.
- The four largest sports leagues in the USA: The National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League.
- There are also two places named Big Four in the United States.