Does the auditor’s size influence the going concern assesment?

Abstract

From the beginning of the new millennium, a number of accounting scandals involving audit firms have occurred. The accounting scandals involving well known Big Four audit firms have particularly been echoing in the media, which puts pressure on them and can make them more conservative in their judgements. One of the significant assumptions that auditors must assess is that of going concern of the audited entity. Existing studies from different countries and conducted for different time periods on whether the size of the auditor affects going concern uncertainty statement, do not show unique results, which implies that there are time and location specifics. Since, to the best of our knowledge, there is no such research for Croatia, the purpose of this article is to analyse on a sample of Croatian companies whether there is a significant difference between the propensity of Big Four and non-Big Four auditors to express going concern uncertainty. A sample of large financially troubled, but not bankrupt manufacturing companies, is used. The findings of our study show that there is no significant difference in stating going concern uncertainty between large international audit firms (Big Four) and smaller auditors.