Credit rating agency response to appointment of female audit partners: Evidence from the UK

Abstract

We study the impact of appointing women as audit partners from a credit rating agency perspective. We investigate whether credit rating agencies value the appointment of women to audit partner positions differently than when men are appointed. This study uses a United Kingdom (UK) balanced panel data of 2472 firm-year observations of public quoted companies from 2009 to 2016 and analyzes how credit rating agencies respond to such appointments. We find a more positive credit score reaction after appointment of a female audit partner than that following the appointment of a male audit partner. This finding suggests that, from a credit rating agency perspective, there seems to be a business case for a particular gender when it comes to appointing audit partners.