Tenure audit effect on timeliness of financial statement publication with industry specialist auditors as moderating

This study aims to empirically examine the effect of tenure audits on the timely publication of financial statements moderated by industry specialist auditors. This study uses a sample of 726 Firm Years, which were obtained through a purposive sampling method from companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2018-2020. This study uses the method of Sub-Group Logistic Regression and Sub-Group Moderation in testing the hypothesis. The results of this study indicate that audit tenure has a negative effect on the timeliness of financial statement publications. This means that the longer the audit period of an auditor, the publication of financial statements will be relatively less timely. The results of this study also show that industry specialist auditors are able to moderate the relationship between audit tenure and the timeliness of financial statement publications. This means that the influence of audit tenure on the timely publication of financial statements in the industry specialist auditor group is greater than in the non-industry specialist auditor group. Therefore, the more specialist the auditor, the stronger the influence between audit tenure on timeliness.

Does Industry Specialist Auditor Provide More Insights in Their audit report? An Empirical Study of Key Audit Matters Section

In 2015, International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) released new International Standards on Auditing 701 and required auditors to disclose key audit matters (KAM) in the audit report. Similar standards were also released in the United States in 2017 and the United Kingdom and Ireland Financial Reporting Council (FRC) in 2014. As KAM are expected to inform on matters of the greatest significance during an audit, before exploring the question regarding whether investors will obtain useful information from additional matter disclosures, the anterior consideration may be in regard to how audit quality affects the disclosure quality of KAM. This study use hand-collected data of the KAM disclosed in the audit reports of Taiwanese listed companies in 2016 to explore the association between auditor industry specialization and audit quality by the disclosure of KAM in new audit reports. The empirical results show that the association between the industrial specialist audit partner and the measurement of KAM quality is significantly positively related. The findings support our hypothesis that specialist auditors’ KAM are more informative than those issued by non-specialist auditors, and provide new evidence supporting prior studies about the superior auditing ability and disclosure quality of auditor industry specialist. Keywords: Key Audit Matters, KAM, International Standards on Auditing 701, International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board.

Control-Ownership Wedge and Industry Specialist Auditor

This study extends agency theory by explaining the client's understanding of audit quality. This study contributes to the audit literature by examining the effect of wedge control-ownership on industry specialist auditors that have not been researched in Turkey. The interests of minority and controlling shareholders are not completely compatible. The research analysis method used a logistic regression model, finding that firms that practice a larger difference between control rights and cash flow rights tend to prefer high audit quality measures by industry specialist auditors. This study encourages regulators to improve law enforcement to enhance the role of corporate governance in Turkey to address the features of ownership-control firms and offer a suitable environment for investment and minority shareholders.

Does Mandatory Audit Partner Rotation Influence Auditor Selection Strategies?

Under mandatory rotation, the switching cost may be the most influential factor to be considered for experienced mandatory audit rotations. This study attempts to explore the impacts of the mandatory rotation mechanism on company information disclosure and signaling strategies by examining the audit partner and audit firm switching activities of the mandatory rotation company. Are companies that experience mandatory audit rotation more likely to engage industry specialist auditors with better industry-specific knowledge and reputations to minimize the costs of mandatory rotations? Furthermore, in the case of being required to rotate audit partners, do companies rotate only audit partners, rather than changing both audit partners and audit firms at the same time, to minimize switching costs? To explore these problems, this study examined auditor rotations of listed companies in Taiwan from 2004 to 2016; and expected that, to minimize switching costs, mandatory rotation companies are more likely to select industry specialist auditors to be their successor auditors, and are less likely to rotate audit partners and audit firms at the same time. For the audit partner rotations, we find that, compared to voluntarily rotated companies, a higher percentage of companies choose industry specialist auditors to be their successor audit partners under mandatory rotation. Furthermore, the empirical results support our expectations that companies that experience mandatory audit partner rotation are significantly more likely to engage industry specialists to be their successor audit partners and are more likely to rotate only audit partners rather than rotating both audit partners and audit firms around mandatory audit rotation periods.

Audit committee effectiveness characteristics and auditor switches involving industry specialists

The aim of this study is to investigate the association between audit committee effectiveness characteristics and auditor switches to or from an industry specialist audit firm. This study uses data on auditor changes from Audit Analytics, financial data from North American Compustat, and hand-collected data including audit committee characteristics (such as audit committee chair tenure, the proportion of auditing experts on the audit committee, etc.), the number of audit committee meetings and stock ownership from proxy statements between 2005 and 2011. The results reveal that firms with audit committees that have a large proportion of auditing experts are more likely to choose an industry specialist auditor when the firm switches its auditor. Furthermore, the results also show that the longer the tenure of the audit committee chair is, the more likely that the firm switches from a non-specialist to a specialist auditor. This study adds to the literature by exploring the association between audit committee effectiveness characteristics and auditor switches involving industry specialists. The findings inform regulators regarding the impact that audit committee effectiveness characteristics have on auditor switches involving specialists