Going-concern opinions and corporate governance

Abstract

This paper looks into the issuance of auditor's going-concern opinions and investigates how it triggers subsequent changes in corporate governance, specifically, the corporate control, executive compensation and management turnover. Using a difference-in-difference approach with the exogenous shock of Auditing Standard No. 5 (AS5) in 2007, we find that going-concern opinion leads to the decrease in blockholder ownership and institutional ownership, the reduction in CEO's cash compensation and total compensation, and the increase in the turnovers of top executives and auditors, indicating strong monitoring function of the auditors.