Financial experts on the top management team: Do they reduce investment inefficiency?

We examine the effect of the top management team (TMT) professional finance experience on firm investment efficiency. Top managers with a career background in finance help reduce deviations of investment from the level warranted by firm fundamentals. Reductions in investment inefficiencies are achieved by financial expert managers using project-specific rather than company-wide, discount rates for project evaluation and facilitating debt and equity issuance at lower costs. Greater investment efficiency due to the financial expertise of TMT improves firm performance. We demonstrate that these improvements are driven by the collective expertise of the TMT rather than solely by chief executive officers.     

A note on perceptions of auditors’ internal control report mandated by the PCAOB: Can reformatting the report enhance perceived value added?

The auditor’s report is a critical link in communicating financial data to users. Because of substantial audit costs incurred in integrated audits, the perceived value added by the auditor’s report becomes even more important. The auditor’s report prescribed by Auditing Standard No. 2 (and the new Auditing Standard No. 5) issued by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) includes a limitations paragraph. The SAS 58 audit report format that has been in use over 15 years does not contain a limitations paragraph. The SAS 58 report likely serves as a mental frame of reference (a referent report) for users evaluating other independent auditor’s report formats relating to assurance services, including the AS2 and AS5 reports. Whether inclusion of a limitations paragraph could adversely affect the users’ evaluation of the AS2 report is the focus of this study. In light of the publicity given to fraudulent financial reporting and other prevailing economic/environmental conditions, it is reasonable for users to expect that the auditor’s report provide a high degree of assurance regarding material fraud.We extend the [Foster, B. P., McClain, G., Shastri, T. (2005). A note on Pre-Sarbanes-Oxley Act users’ and auditors’ perceptions of a limitations paragraph in the auditor’s internal control report. Research in Accounting Regulations, 18, 195-217] study, by focusing on the AS2 report using data obtained about user perceptions from a field experiment conducted with MBA students. Results suggest that users perceive that an internal control report format without the limitations paragraph will enhance the readability and reliability of the report, and reduce the level of accommodation (additional information) required for decision making. Users perceive that the auditors’ exposure/liability is likely to remain substantially the same whether or not the report format includes a limitations paragraph. Also, users perceive that incorporating fraud wording would further enhance the readability and reliability dimensions of the internal control report format without the limitations paragraph. Taken collectively, the auditor’s report format with fraud wording, but without the limitations paragraph likely maximizes economic benefit accruing to users by minimizing their information risk. Policy-making bodies may find the results and approach taken in this study useful to evaluate report formats for assurance services.