Purpose -While recently introduced EU regulation on the Statutory Audit of Public Interest Entities (PIE) aims to improve audit competition and quality, its success and impact depends on the definition of a PIE applied across the various EU Member States. In the UK, even though little is known about their auditing choices, these changes will not apply to most private companies despite their importance to the wider economy. This paper therefore provides an in-depth analysis of the private company audit market and examines the lobbying behaviour of the accounting profession around the definition of a PIE in the UK. Design/methodology/approach -Using a large panel of independent private company audits in the UK and a textual analysis of submitted comment letters to a government consultation on the new regulation, this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the audit market for private companies by measuring supplier concentration using four different measures of market share, and of the lobbying behaviour of the accounting profession.Findings -There are two main findings. First, the private company audit market is characterised by low auditor switching rates along with a tight oligopoly of the largest independent private company audits maintained by the Big Four audit firms. Second, the lobbying behaviour of accounting and audit firms sought, and succeeded, to limit the scope of the definition of a Public Interest Entity in the UK, consistent with the theoretical predictions of monopoly capitalism and the theory of professions. Originality/value -The paper shows that the definition and scope of a Public Interest Entity needs revisiting both within the UK and across all EU Member States, with a view to including more of these economically important private companies and highlights the policy challenge of increasing competition and choice in a concentrated audit market. Paper type -research paper.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected a multifaceted human existence and investors who have to deal with the uncertainty of the stock market is not exempted. Therefore, the study aims to investigate to what extent corporate risk disclosure affects the investors' perceived confidence and trust. Our study employed partial least square analysis on the research framework and hypotheses through Smart-PLS software using data collected from 108 Malaysian individual investors. This study examined three theories, namely Stakeholder, Signalling and Prospect theories, representing the respective variables of investor perceived confidence and trust, corporate risk disclosures, and COVID-19. Based on the theories, the assumption is that investors (as part of stakeholders) will have an increased perception of more losses in times of crisis if they are not given any assurance and transparent disclosure signals. The extant study revealed a direct positive relationship between financial, operations and strategic risk disclosure to perceived investor confidence and trust. The results also indicated that most investors concurred that COVID-19 significantly impacts investor perceived confidence and trust in relation to the three stated risks.