Going-concern Opinion Research Articles

Greater Reliance on Major Customers and Auditor Going‐Concern Opinions

ABSTRACTIn this study, we predict and provide evidence that distressed firms that rely more heavily on major customers for sales have a comparatively higher incidence of receiving going‐concern opinions (GCOs). Moreover, we find that the effect of increased reliance on major customers is driven by firms that are more distressed. We also theorize that variations in key characteristics of the relationship between a distressed firm and its largest major customer are incrementally linked to GCOs, and present evidence consistent with this. Specifically, we find that the effect of greater reliance on major customers is driven by firms that are relatively smaller than their largest major customer. Additionally, we find that greater reliance on major customers is positively (negatively) associated with GCOs when firms are in a shorter (longer) relationship with their major customer and when firms have a different auditor to (same auditor as) the largest major customer. Overall, our study indicates that supply chain relationships are relevant business risks associated with auditors' going‐concern assessments.

On the Relation between Insider Trading and Going Concern Opinions

SUMMARY Recent research suggests that insiders of distressed firms, fearing legal jeopardy, pressure auditors not to issue going concern opinions (GCOs) for periods in which they undertake abnormally large sales of their shares. We propose and evaluate an alternative explanation that managers anticipate GCOs and time their trades to avoid insider sales in the GCO year (hereafter, the timing hypothesis). Consistent with the timing hypothesis, we find that insider sales increase two to four years prior to the issuance of a GCO and then decline in the year of GCO. Additional analysis suggests that insiders' anticipatory trading is enabled, at least in part, by early communication between auditors and their most important clients regarding the likelihood of a GCO. These early communications appear to reduce the likelihood of dismissal when auditors do eventually issue a GCO.

The Effect of Corporate Social Performance on Audit Hours: Moderating Role of the Emphasis of Matter Paragraphs in Audit Report

This study investigated the effect of corporate social performance (CSP) on audit hours and whether the emphasis of matter (EOM) paragraphs in audit report moderates the association between CSP and audit hours. Auditors input audit hours based on the judgement of audit risk related to firm and managerial characteristics. They increase audit hours when they perceive that client companies are riskier; thus, audit hours reflect auditors’ perceptions of the firm. Prior studies have shown that high CSP is associated with ethical managers, leading to fewer audit hours. However, auditors’ perceptions of CSP can be different depending on their knowledge about firms’ potential risks. EOM paragraphs consists of risk-related factors, such as going-concern opinions or litigation and they should be considered when auditors determine that users need to check this information acquired in the auditing process. Therefore, EOM is likely to affect auditors’ perceptions of CSP. This study investigates this possibility by examining whether the associations between CSP and audit hours are different in firms with and without EOM paragraphs in audit reports. Using Korean listed companies from 2011 to 2016, we found that CSP has a negative association with audit hours, suggesting that better CSP is related to ethical corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Korea, consistently with the literature. However, CSP is not related to audit hours for firms with EOM paragraphs, possibly indicating that auditors differently interpret CSP based on their knowledge gained in the auditing process. Our findings contribute to the literature by suggesting that EOM paragraphs can be used in distinguishing firms’ CSR motivations and that information users should be careful in interpreting CSP.

PENGARUH GOOD CORPORATE GOVERNANCE TERHADAP OPINI GOING CONCERN

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of good corporate governance on going concern opinion. Indicators used to measure good corporate governance is institutional ownership, managerial ownership, and the proportion of the independent board of commissioners. Meanwhile, going concern opinion as the dependent variable is measured by a dummy variable. This study uses secondary data with a population of companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (BEI) 2014-2018. The method used to determine the sample using purposive sampling. Consisting of 50 industrial manufacturing companies with 250 samples outlier to 243 samples. The analysis method used is logistic regression. The results of hypothesis testing show that managerial ownership has a positive effect on going-concern opinion. Meanwhile, institutional ownership and the proportion of independent commissioners do not have a significant effect on going-concern opinion.

Why Does an Auditor Not Issue a Going Concern Opinion for a Failing Company? Impact of Financial Risk, Time to Bankruptcy, and Cognitive Style

This study investigates the effects of client’s financial risk, time to bankruptcy, and auditor’s cognitive style on issuing a Going Concern Opinion (GCO) for failing companies. Empirical tests are based on financial data from 328 bankrupt firms and peer review data from 172 auditors. Cognitive style on an intuitive-analytic dimension is approximated by the degree of auditor’s compliance with the ISA standards for analytic procedures in peer review. Empirical findings support research hypotheses and show that seriousness of the financial risk and time distance to bankruptcy are important determinants of GC judgment accuracy. They also show that the performance of the cognitive style of the auditor is related to the fit between the cognitive style and the characteristics of the GC situation. The results indicate that an auditor’s individual characteristics, i.e. cognitive style, affect his/her decision making when issuing GCO. This study is the first approach that systematically investigates the relationship between financial risk, distance to bankruptcy, and cognitive style on GC judgment in an archival research.

Going-concern opinions and corporate governance

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.

Going-concern opinions and corporate governance

Going-concern opinions and corporate governance

Pengaruh Pergantian Auditor, Fee Auditor, Dan Kepemilikan Asing Terhadap Penerimaan Opini Audit Going Concern Dengan Spesialisasi Auditor Sebagai Variabel Moderasi

Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah menguji dan menganalisis pengaruh Auditor Switching, Biaya Auditor dan Kepemilikan Asing terhadap Penerimaan Opini Going concern dengan Spesialisasi Auditor sebagai Variabel Moderating. Populasi yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah perusahaan yang terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia (BEI) antara tahun 2014 dan 2017. Sampel dalam penelitian ini dipilih dengan metode purposive sampling dengan 40 perusahaan yang memenuhi kriteria. Pengujian dilakukan dengan menggunakan analisis regresi logistik. Hasil penelitian ini menyatakan bahwa penggantian auditor dan biaya auditor tidak mempengaruhi penerimaan opini audit going concern. Sedangkan variabel kepemilikan asing berpengaruh negatif terhadap penerimaan opini audit going concern. Selain itu, hasil penelitian ini juga menyatakan bahwa spesialisasi auditor tidak melemahkan pengaruh negatif dari pergantian auditor pada penerimaan opini audit going concern. Akan tetapi, memperkuat efek positif biaya auditor terhadap penerimaan opini audit going concern dan melemahkan pengaruh negatif kepemilikan asing pada penerimaan opini audit going concern.

FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANG BERPENGARUH TERHADAP PENERIMAAN OPINI GOING CONCERN PADA PERUSAHAAN MANUFAKTUR YANG MENGALAMI FINANCIAL DISTRESS

Going concern audit opinion is an audit opinion issued by the auditor to ascertain whether the company can maintain its survival or not. The survival of a business entity is influenced by internal constraints, namely constraints within the company itself such as financial conditions, human resources, corporate culture, mastery of technology, internal supervision, etc. and external conditions can be constraints outside the company such as markets, monetary conditions, social, politics and others. Several studies show that the factors that encourage auditors to issue going concern opinions are different and the results are not conclusive. So, this study aims to reexamine the factors that influence the going concern audit opinion. The factors tested in this study are liquidity, audit firm reputation, previous year's audit opinion, and company size. This study uses manufacturing companies that experienced financial distress on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2014-2016 as a research sample. The results of purposive sampling, obtained a number of 31 manufacturing companies that meet the sample criteria. Testing the hypothesis in this study using logistic regression analysis. The test results show that only the previous year's audit opinion affected the acceptance of the going-concern audit opinion. Meanwhile, the variable liquidity, KAP reputation, and company size do not affect the acceptance of going-concern audit opinion.

Faktor-Faktor Yang Mempengaruhi Opini Audit Going Concern (Studi Empiris pada Perusahaan Pertambangan yang Terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia Periode 2015-2017)

Going concern audit opinion is an opinion issued by the auditor to ascertain whether the company can maintain its survival. This research was conducted to examine the factors that influence the going concern audit opinion. These factors are, company size, company growth, solvency and previous year's audit opinion. The sample in this study are mining companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange during the 2015-2017 period. The sample selection is done by purposive sampling technique, namely the selection of samples based on certain criteria. So that the total sample of this study was 60 samples. Data analysis used is logistic regression analysis using SPSS version 20. The results of this study are company size, company growth and solvency does not affect the going concern audit opinion. Whereas, the previous year's audit opinion affects the going-concern audit opinion.

The value relevance of expected vs. unexpected going concern opinions

Previous event studies find that going concern opinions (GCOs) convey significant information to the market when the audit reports appear to be unexpected. Using the value relevance method, this paper examines the differential impact of expected and unexpected going concern opinions on the market value of US firms for the 2000–2006 time period. The results suggest that while both firms receiving expected and unexpected GCOs suffer a drop in their average market value, the decrease is larger in the case of firms with unexpected GCOs. It is also observed that the market tends to shift the weight they place on earnings to the book value of equity in valuing firms with unexpected GCOs. Specifically, the decrease in the pricing multiple of earnings is larger for the case of unexpected GCOs. This result suggests that GCOs are more informative when they are unexpected. The study complements existing work by exploring whether expected GCOs have any differential valuation impact than unexpected GCOs instead of looking at the informativeness of GCOs alone.

When Auditors Say ‘No,’ Does the Market Listen?

Previous research on whether the market responds to auditors’ opinions has provided mixed results. We revisit this issue in China, where individual investors who are more likely to neglect value-relevant information dominate the stock market. In addition to going concern opinions (GCOs), China permits modified audit opinions (MAOs) on violations of accounting standards or disclosure rules (GAAP/DISC MAOs), providing an opportunity not available in the literature to enrich the study of audit-opinion pricing. We find that, ceteris paribus, MAO recipients underperform in the future and have a higher incidence of adverse outcomes such as misreporting and stock delisting, and the market reacts negatively to MAOs during the short window around MAO disclosure. Importantly, MAO disclosure is not followed by negative long-term stock returns, suggesting stock price adjustments to MAOs are speedy and unbiased. These findings hold for both GCOs and GAAP/DISC MAOs. Together, our findings support the informativeness of audit opinions and cast doubt on the argument that investors inefficiently price audit opinions due to information-processing bias.

Big4 Versus Non-Big4 Opinion about the Going Concern Assessment: A Survey

Going concern (GC) assessment is a central element in the audit process. During the Global Financial Crisis the increasing number of companies receiving a going concern opinion (GCO) has stimulated public interest on this topic. Our study fuels the debate about the financial indicators used in professional practice distinguishing between the big4 and non-big4 auditors’ perspectives. Similar studies have been conducted in the past that investigated which financial ratios are the most widely used in practice. However, in 2013 Carson et al stressed the fact that the audit environment is in constant evolution, therefore it is essential to update the evidence. Our results highlight which financial indicators in the auditors’ opinion are more effective to assess whether the entity is able to continue as a GC. Our research can be useful first of all for auditors in small and medium entities, but also for dierctors, due to the fact that there is a lack of studies regarding the indicators proposed by ISA 570, where the attitudes of the big4 and non-big4 are compared.

Annual report readability subsequent to going-concern opinions

PurposeThis study aims to examine a firm’s disclosure properties subsequent to receiving a going-concern opinion.Design/methodology/approachA difference-in-difference research design was used to control for endogeneity issues. Annual report readability is used as a proxy for firm disclosure.FindingsThe results indicate a negative and significant association between issuance of a going-concern report to a firm and the firm’s readability index in the subsequent year. In other words, after receiving a going-concern opinion, a firm’s annual report exhibits increased readability. The results, when broken into subsamples of surviving and failing firms, are concentrated in the surviving firms.Research limitations/implicationsPrior research has shown that firms change their disclosure properties due to endogenous choices motivated by incentive or exogenous shocks. The results of this study, however, suggest that firms that receive going-concern opinions are incentivized to be more forthcoming in disclosing their financial information.Originality/valueTo the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate how firms’ general disclosures change subsequent to receiving a going-concern opinion.

Do Managers Successfully Shop for Compliant Auditors? Evidence from Accounting Estimates

Existing research on opinion shopping focuses primarily on managers’ attempts to switch auditors in order to avoid the receipt of an unfavorable audit opinion. We extend this literature by examining whether managers successfully shop for auditors who will allow questionable accounting practices, as evidenced by opportunistic changes in accounting estimates following auditor switches. Using manually collected data from SEC filings, we find an increase in the frequency and magnitude of discretionary income-increasing changes in accounting estimates (DICE) following auditor switches. We further find that companies reporting DICE following an auditor switch are more likely to subsequently restate earnings downward, receive fewer goingconcern opinions, experience lower abnormal stock returns in the years following the switch, and tend to switch auditors during the fourth quarter or following a disagreement with the predecessor auditor. These findings provide ex-post evidence that managers successfully shop for more lenient auditors. We also find that managers’ switch decisions maximize the ex-ante likelihood of reporting income-increasing changes in estimates, and that companies are more likely to switch to auditors whose clients have a greater likelihood of reporting income-increasing changes in estimates. Taken together, we provide both ex-ante and ex-post evidence that auditor-switch companies shop for compliant auditors that will allow the use of opportunistic accounting that meets management’s reporting objectives.

Greater Reliance on Major Customers and Auditor Going Concern Opinions

In this study we predict and provide evidence that distressed firms that rely more heavily on major customers for sales have a comparatively higher incidence of receiving going concern opinions (GCOs). Moreover, we find that the effect of increased reliance on major customers is driven by firms that are more distressed. We also theorize that variations in key characteristics of the relationship between distressed firms and their largest major customer are incrementally linked to GCOs, and present evidence consistent with this. Specifically, we find that the effect of greater reliance on major customers is driven by firms that are relatively smaller than their largest major customer. Additionally, we find that greater reliance on major customers is positively (negative) associated with GCOs when firms are in a shorter (longer) relationship with their major customer and when firms have a different auditor to (same auditor as) the largest major customer. Overall, our study indicates that supply-chain relationships are relevant business risks associated with auditors’ going concern assessments.

Does the Length of the Cooling-Off Period Impact Audit Quality?

Several countries have implemented a policy of mandatory partner rotation (MPR) in response to concerns around auditor independence. Integrated within MPR requirements, minimum cooling-off periods regulate audit quality at the time of a rotation-back. Within the context of a proposed extension to the minimum cooling-off period, we examine the association between the length of the cooling-off period and audit quality. We use Australian data as the partner can be identified and there is variation in cooling-off periods since the inception of MPR. We consider the merits of an extended cooling-off period by measuring audit quality both at the time of a rotation-back and at the expiration of a cooling-off period. Consistent with prior literature, we measure audit quality as abnormal working capital accruals and the auditor’s propensity to issue a going-concern opinion for financially distressed firms. For rotation-back observations, we find no evidence of an association between the length of the cooling-off period and audit quality. For cooling-off period observations, we find some evidence of larger abnormal working capital accruals and a lower propensity to issue a going-concern opinion, consistent with a deterioration in audit quality associated with longer cooling-off periods. We provide preliminary evidence that extending the cooling-off period does not enhance audit quality when a partner rotates-back on to a client and uncover an unintended consequence of the effect of this policy during the cooling-off period.

Going concern opinions and IPO pricing accuracy

In a marked shift, it has become relatively more common for ordinary initial public offerings (IPOs) to contain going concern opinions (GCOs) in their offering documents. Examining the implications of such GCOs for IPO investors in a sample of ordinary IPOs from 2001 to 2012, we find that GCOs increase price accuracy by reducing price revisions and underpricing. Further, we show that GCO IPOs with reputable underwriters experience higher price revisions. Our underpricing analysis supports the lawsuit avoidance theory. We also provide novel evidence that the market can distinguish between temporarily constrained GCO IPOs and those with persistent problems that receive a second GCO post-IPO. Overall, this paper contributes to the existing literature by shedding light on whether GCOs contained in IPO prospectuses provide material information and result in better pricing mechanisms.

The impact of auditor conservatism on accruals and going concern opinion: Iranian angle

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine high-quality auditors’ conservatism in Iran market based on the classification of Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) in terms of their reaction to client’s earnings management behavior and their limitations to issue the going concern opinions (GCOs) over an eight-year period from 2009 to 2016.Design/methodology/approachThe study population consists of 1,376 observations and 172 companies listed on the TSE during the years 2009-2016. Following the prior studies, the authors used the modified Jones model to measure discretionary accruals as a proxy for earnings management.FindingsThe results witnessed a negative relationship between the size of the audit firm and discretionary accruals; besides, the relationship between abnormal accruals and GCO on companies audited by high-quality audit firms is higher than other companies. In other words, firms with GCO, which were audited by the Iranian large auditors, report negative abnormal accruals less than those audited by non-large auditors. In short, in spite of the special features of Iran market because of economic sanctions, this paper extends prior literature clarifying that auditors’ conservatism induces accrual reversals when auditors issue GCOs. One interpretation of this result is that the existence of such association is because of not only auditor conservatism but also financially distressed firms.Practical implicationsThe outcomes of this paper will help to fill the knowledge gap related to this issue between developing and developed countries because this investigation exposed more than ever the vital role of the auditor as an observer on the financial statements. Without any exaggeration, this research will make investors and stakeholders aware of this fact that auditor conservatism will be effective in reducing the manipulation of financial reporting and agency problems in emerging markets, particularly those markets facing with economic sanctions like Iran.Originality/valueBecause of Iran’s dire economic situation during the period under consideration, this is one of the most comprehensive research among the countries of the Middle East that surveys the impact of auditor conservatism on accruals and GCO in an emerging market, namely, Iran.

Opinion Shopping to Avoid a Going Concern Audit Opinion and Subsequent Audit Quality

SUMMARY Despite regulatory concerns over opinion shopping (OS) behavior, there exists little systematic evidence on the prevalence and consequences of OS to avoid a going concern opinion (GCO). Using Lennox's (2000) framework to identify OS, we find that distressed firms successfully engage in OS to avoid a GCO. Moreover, clients engaging in OS exhibit a higher ex post Type II error rate in audit opinions than clients that do not, and the higher Type II error rate is salient for clients switching auditors for OS but not for clients retaining auditors for OS. We continue to find this asymmetric effect of the two types of OS on audit quality measured by restatements. These results indicate that auditor switching for OS not only results in a higher likelihood of audit reporting failures but also impairs other dimensions of audit quality, while auditor retaining for OS has little adverse effect on audit quality.