Responses by Australian auditors to the global financial crisis

We examine the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on auditor behaviour in Australia. Using a sample of listed companies, we examine whether the GFC impacted the propensity of auditors to issue going concern modifications and increased audit effort as reflected in audit fees and audit reporting lag. Controlling for client characteristics, we find an increase in the propensity to issue going concern opinions during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007 and that Big N auditors responded to the GFC earlier than non‐Big N auditors. In relation to audit effort, we find evidence of increased audit fees during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007. There is, however, no evidence of increased audit reporting lags during the GFC.     

Balance sheet conservatism and audit reporting conservatism

Financial reports are prepared on a going‐concern (GC) basis rather than a liquidation basis even when companies are highly distressed. This allows distressed companies to report book values of assets that greatly exceed their liquidation values, implying a lack of conservatism in the balance sheet. We argue that auditors issue going‐concern opinions in order to warn investors about this lack of balance sheet conservatism. This argument leads to two testable hypotheses. First, for companies that are at risk of bankruptcy, auditors are more likely to issue GC opinions when the book values of assets under the GC assumption are high relative to the expected liquidation values of assets (i.e., when the GC assumption causes the balance sheet to lack conservatism). Second, for companies that enter bankruptcy, the issuance of a prior GC opinion has predictive information content with respect to the wedge between the book values of assets and the future liquidation values of those same assets. Our results strongly support both hypotheses. The findings are important because they indicate that conservative audit reporting helps to compensate for a lack of conservatism in the balance sheet, which arises because the GC assumption permits the book values of assets to exceed their liquidation values.     

Auditor reporting and earnings management: some additional evidence

This paper investigates the reasons that lead to modification of auditors’ opinions. We revisit the conclusions of prior US‐based research on whether a modification highlights likely earnings management activities. Extending this research, we consider an alternate explanation that managers adjust accruals to report earnings that better predict future firm performance, which has the side‐effect of placing them in conflict with their auditors. Our study sample comprises all firms listed on the Australian Stock Exchange over the period 1999–2003. Consistent with prior research, there is no evidence of earnings management leading to an audit opinion modification. However, we do show that firms receiving inherent uncertainty modifications (other than going concern) have greater persistence of earnings (accruals) relative to other firms. This is consistent with the proposition that managers have made policy choices in reporting current earnings, with which their auditors disagree, that will likely result in a greater ability to forecast the firm's future earnings.     

Determinants of going concern opinions and audit fees for development stage enterprises

Startup entities have been the focus of much political and academic interest recently. Development stage enterprises (DSEs), as defined by SFAS 7, are startup entities for which some publicly available information exists. New accounting standards have removed the DSE designation and related extra reporting requirements, and placed more responsibility on owners and managers to assess the ability of entities to continue as a going concern. We examined information from financial statements and audit reports of companies previously reporting as DSEs to investigate what increases the likelihood of receiving a going concern modification in auditors' opinions (GCO) and what affects audit fees. Our overall analyses indicate that the asset size of DSEs, negative working capital, and prior-year going concern modifications consistently influence going concern modifications to auditors' opinions. Managers should clearly consider these conditions when making their assessment of their companies' future going concern status. Our results indicate that the size of the audit firm did not influence the going concern modification decision, but Big4 auditors charge significantly higher fees than other auditors. Thus, managers/owners of DSEs should weigh the benefits of having a Big4 firm audit on their financial statements against the higher fees charged by those firms.     

Explaining auditors’ propensity to issue going‐concern opinions in Australia after the global financial crisis

We document an increase in auditors issuing going‐concern opinions in Australia over a prolonged period since the Global Financial Crisis that is not fully explained by changes in client risk. Overall, our evidence is consistent with auditors reporting more conservatively with the increased level of scrutiny from Australian Securities and Investments Commission inspections and other increased regulation, and in particular, the negative attention following the 2011–2012 inspections. As a result, auditor reports with reference to going‐concern issues have become less informative regarding future corporate failure.     

Audit Fees, Non-Audit Fees and Auditor Going-Concern Reporting Decisions in the United Kingdom

The accounting profession has come under increased scrutiny over recent years about the growing number of non-audit fees received from audit clients and the possible negative impact of such fees on auditor independence. The argument advanced is that providing substantial amounts of non-audit services to clients may make it more likely that auditors concede to the wishes of the client management when difficult judgments are made. Such concerns are particularly salient in the case of reporting decisions related to going-concern uncertainties for financially stressed clients.
 This study empirically examines audit reports provided to financially stressed companies in the United Kingdom and the magnitude of audit and non-audit service fees paid to the company's auditors. We find that the magnitude of both audit fees and non-audit fees are significantly associated with the issuance of a going-concern modified audit opinion. In particular, financially stressed companies with high audit fees are more likely to receive a going-concern modified audit opinion, whereas companies with high non-audit fees are less likely to receive a going-concern modified audit opinion. Additional analyses indicate that the results are generally robust across alternative model and variable specifications. Overall, evidence supports the contention that high non-audit fees have a detrimental effect on going-concern reporting judgments for financially stressed U.K. companies.     

Effects of managerial overconfidence and ability on going-concern decisions and auditor turnover

I examine how the appearance of managerial overconfidence and managerial ability affect 1) auditors' decisions to issue a going concern opinion and 2) auditor dismissal rates after issuing a going concern opinion. Managerial attributes are likely to have an influence on auditors' decisions because auditors obtain and evaluate information about client management's remedy plans when there is substantial doubt about the entity's ability to continue as a going concern. While prior literature on managerial overconfidence classifies all managers who demonstrate overconfident behaviors in one group, I argue that the literature needs to take managerial ability into consideration when measuring overconfidence. I find that auditors are more likely to issue a going concern opinion to clients with seemingly overconfident managers only when the management who appears overconfident is also incompetent. I also find that auditors are more likely to be dismissed after issuance of a going concern opinion when the client company has seemingly overconfident management. Finally, I find that the association between managerial overconfidence and auditor dismissal subsequent to issuance of a going concern opinion is stronger when management is relatively more powerful than the company's audit committee.     

Non-audit Service Fees and Audit Quality: The Impact of Auditor Specialization

We posit that the effect of non‐audit fees on audit quality is conditional on auditor industry specialization. Industry specialist auditors are more likely than nonspecialists to be concerned about reputation losses and litigation exposure, and to benefit from knowledge spillovers from the provision of non‐audit services. We find evidence that audit quality measured by increased propensity to issue going‐concern opinion, increased propensity to miss analysts' forecasts, as well as higher earnings‐response coefficients increases with the level of non‐audit services acquired from industry specialist auditors compared to nonspecialist auditors.     

An Empirical Investigation of Determinants of Audit Reports in the UK

Prior studies of audit reporting in the UK only analyse either very small, private companies, or large listed companies. In addition, these studies focus on narrowly defined types of modified audit reports, respectively the 'small company' audit qualification, and going‐concern related modifications. In contrast, this paper employs a multinomial logit model to analyse the determinants of both going‐concern and non going‐concern related audit modifications, including modifications for disagreements and limitations on scope. Furthermore, this paper analyses reports over a wide range of both private and public (listed and non‐listed) companies. The determinants of audit reports are shown to differ between different types of audit modification. In addition, subsidiary companies hiring large auditors are significantly less likely to receive non going‐concern related modifications, whereas non‐subsidiary companies hiring large auditors are significantly more likely to receive going‐concern related modifications.     

Is an Auditor's Propensity to Issue Going Concern Opinions a Valid Measure of Audit Quality?

A number of previous studies use auditor propensity to issue a going concern opinion (GCO) as a proxy of audit quality when examining a sample of financially distressed firms. This study examines whether audit quality (measured by discretionary accruals) influences the probability of financially distressed firms receiving GCOs using a non‐specific sample of 2937 firm‐year observations from Australia over the period 2011–2015. The study first investigates the association between financially distressed firms and the issuance of GCOs. This association is then re‐tested after separating the total sample into low and high audit quality subsamples. The results indicate that financially distressed firms are more likely to receive GCOs, confirming the application of ASA 570 Going Concern. However, financially distressed firms that receive GCOs from their auditors are limited to firms that have higher‐quality audits.     

An investigation of recent changes in going concern reporting decisions among Big N and non-Big N auditors

Corporate accounting failures and regulatory proceedings that led to the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 increased the scrutiny of auditors. We investigate whether these events resulted in a change in auditor behavior with respect to going concern reporting. Generally speaking, we find that non-Big N auditors became more conservative while Big N auditors became more accurate. Specifically, non-Big N auditors issued more going concern opinions to both failing and non-failing clients post-2001, reducing their Type II misclassifications at the expense of increased Type I misclassifications. However, Big N auditors decreased their Type I misclassifications with no corresponding increase in Type II misclassifications. Thus, our findings suggest that increased auditor scrutiny resulted in performance improvements in the area of going concern reporting primarily for larger auditors. For smaller auditors, improved going concern accuracy for subsequently bankrupt clients came at the cost of more going concern opinions being issued to subsequently non-failing clients.     

An Investigation of Auditors’ Judgments When Companies Release Earnings Before Audit Completion

The majority of U.S. public companies release annual earnings prior to the completion of audit fieldwork. We investigate this phenomenon in a controlled experiment with audit partners and senior managers. We find that releasing earnings before completion of the audit pressures auditors to adopt the goals of management, thereby reducing the likelihood of post‐announcement audit‐adjustment recommendations. We also examine the effect of audit committee (AC) strength in improving auditors’ judgments after annual earnings are released. When ACs are actively involved in accounting issues and proactively communicating with auditors—characteristics currently lacking in most ACs—the negative effects on auditors’ judgments are completely mitigated. Our study provides evidence on potential unintended consequences of early release of earnings and the importance of investing in high‐quality ACs to mitigate adverse effects of client pressures on audit judgment and financial reporting quality.     

Trends in Auditor Reporting in Australia: A Synthesis and Opportunities for Research

The purpose of this review is to synthesise the existing research literature regarding audit reporting and, in particular, the going concern decision. We consider the findings of research conducted in Australia and New Zealand on these issues. We then analyse trends in audit reporting from 2005 to 2013. We identify an increase in auditors’ reports highlighting going concern issues well beyond the global financial crisis period confirming that this period represents a period of prolonged economic uncertainty. We identify trends by audit firm type, by industry and company size. We analyse the subsequent year outcomes for firms receiving going concern opinions. We also identify opportunities for future research.     

National and Office‐Specific Measures of Auditor Industry Expertise and Effects on Audit Quality

Our paper examines whether audit quality is higher for industry audit specialists at the national and city‐office levels using the framework developed in Ferguson et al. [2003] and Francis et al. [2005] . We find that auditors who are both national and city‐specific industry specialists have clients with the lowest abnormal accruals, suggesting that joint national and city‐specific industry specialists have the highest audit quality. In addition, we find some evidence that abnormal accruals of firms audited by city‐industry specialists alone (without also being national specific industry specialists) are lower than those audited by nonindustry specialists. Using alternative measures of audit quality, we find that when the auditor is both a national and a city‐specific industry specialist, its clients are less likely to meet or beat analysts' earnings forecasts by one penny per share and more likely to be issued a going‐concern audit opinion. Together these results provide consistent evidence that audit quality is higher when the auditor is both a national and city‐specific industry specialist, suggesting that auditors' national positive network synergies and the individual auditors' deep industry knowledge at the office level are jointly important factors in delivering higher audit quality.     

PCAOB inspection reports and audit quality

With the creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), audit firm oversight shifted away from self-regulation to independent regulation. The inspections program is the central feature of the PCAOB. We examine whether PCAOB inspections are able to distinguish actual audit quality (as opposed to perceived) during the period inspected to better understand this important regulatory tool. We use three measures that proxy for actual audit quality: abnormal accruals, restatements, and the propensity to issue a going concern opinion. For triennially inspected auditors, we find that PCAOB inspections are associated with lower audit quality when the reports are seriously deficient (weaker results for deficient reports). More specifically, we find clients of triennially inspected auditors that receive a deficient or seriously deficient report are associated with significantly higher abnormal current accruals and clients of auditors that receive a seriously deficient report are associated with a greater propensity to restate. Our evidence is subject to the caveat that PCAOB reports for triennially inspected auditors do not capture the going concern aspect of audit quality. For annually inspected auditors, the results are conflicting and suggest PCAOB inspection reports do not distinguish audit quality during the period inspected for annually inspected auditors.     

Are Auditors Professionally Skeptical? Evidence from Auditors’ Going‐Concern Opinions and Management Earnings Forecasts

We examine whether auditors exercise professional skepticism about management earnings forecasts when making going‐concern decisions. Using publicly issued management earnings forecasts as a proxy for earnings forecasts provided by managers to auditors, we find that management earnings forecasts are negatively associated with both auditors’ going‐concern opinions and subsequent bankruptcy. The weight auditors put on management forecasts in the going‐concern decision is not significantly different from the weight implied in the bankruptcy prediction model. Moreover, compared with the bankruptcy model, auditors assign a lower weight to management forecasts they perceive as being less credible, including those (1) issued by managers who issued optimistic forecasts in the previous two years, and (2) predicting high earnings increases or high earnings. Taken together, our evidence is consistent with auditors being professionally skeptical about management earnings forecasts when making going‐concern decisions.     

Do Expert Informational Intermediaries Add Value? Evidence from Auditors in Microcap Initial Public Offerings

Do expert informational intermediaries add value? We address this question by examining the informativeness of the audit report contained in the prospectus associated with a firm's initial public offering (IPO). At the time of the IPO, there is a relative lack of information to facilitate the establishment of equity values, suggesting that the information provided by outside “experts” (e.g., auditors, underwriters) is particularly important. In this article we study small, non‐venture‐backed IPOs, a segment of the market with the poorest long‐run performance and where the prestigious audit firm is often the sole (if any) expert present. We find that the pre‐IPO opinions of larger auditors are more predictive of post‐IPO negative stock delistings. Of particular note, the opinions of the national‐tiered firms are comparably predictive to those of the Big 6, though this finding emerges only after we consider the selectivity‐based differences in the clients that hire these national firms. Our findings also indicate that, for larger auditors the presence of a pre‐IPO going‐concern opinion is more strongly associated with first‐year stock returns and that larger auditors are more likely to give such opinions to their distressed clients. Overall, we address a deficiency in the literature relating to “the paucity of evidence on the value of auditor opinions to investors” (Healy and Palepu [ 2001 p. 415]).     

吃人的嘴软吗?基于审计师餐旅费与审计质量关系的实证研究

本文基于2001—2008年上市公司数据,以是否向审计师提供餐旅费作为研究视角,用以反映上市公司与会计师事务所之间的经济绑定关系以及社会关系亲疏的信号,实证检验了公司提供餐旅费与审计质量之间的关系。我们以发表非标准意见的倾向、操控性应计利润和盈余稳健性来衡量审计质量,采用虚拟变量和连续变量来计量餐旅费,结果发现,除在个别模型中公司提供餐旅费在微弱条件下损害审计质量外,没有一致证据表明餐旅费与审计质量的降低存在显著关系,这表明公司为审计师提供餐旅费,并未对审计师决策产生实质影响。     

Non‐Audit Service Fees and Financial Reporting Quality: A Meta‐Analysis

Auditing as a corporate governance mechanism has attracted considerable research attention. Because of the information asymmetry between corporate managers and outside shareholders, auditors are hired to provide independent assurance that financial statements are prepared following generally accepted accounting principles. The credibility of such assurance depends on the independence, both in fact and in appearance, of the auditor. Over the years, however, the independence of auditors has come under increased scrutiny because of their joint provision of both audit and non‐audit services. A sizable literature on the impact of non‐audit fees on financial reporting quality has developed. The evidence from this literature, however, remains inconclusive. This paper provides a meta‐analysis of the available literature by assessing (a) the net effect of non‐audit fees on financial reporting quality, and (b) whether there is homogeneity in the financial reporting quality proxies used in the extant literature. Findings suggest that the level of client‐specific non‐audit fees is associated with reduced financial reporting quality. However, the underlying studies used to conduct this meta‐analysis are not homogenous.