France’s joint-audit requirement and audit fees: The influence of ownership and governance

Abstract

Besides the size of the external auditor, which is a major determinant, audit fees depend also on audit market characteristics, corporate governance and ownership. On the basis of a sample of 130 French listed companies during the 2004–2006 period, we present evidence of a “Big” auditor premium. The results highlight that the presence of a “Big” among auditors has a positive and significant effect of the level of audit fees. This impact is more important in the case of joint audit by two “Big” auditors. The choice of a “Major” auditor also increases the level of audit fees. Finally, we find that governance and ownership characteristics act in different ways on auditor’s selection involving complementarity or substitution with external audit

Audit quality and abolition of mandated joint-audits: evidence from Kuwait

“…, 2013). A joint-audit' is distinguished from a “double-audit” (audit work is fully repeated or performed twice); “dual-audit” (separate audits by two independent audit firms that issue separate reports that are used by another audit firm that ultimately reports on the entity as a whole); and a “dual-signature audit” (audit is completed by a single independent audit firm with two audit partners signing the independent report) (Nikhili et al ., 2014; Lesage et al ., 2017; Velte, 2017).…”

“…Big4 or Non-Big4) commonly used in prior research (e.g. Poit, 2007;Ratzinger-Sakel et al, 2013;Nekhili et al, 2014;Lesage et al, 2017;Holm and Thinggaard, 2018). This allows our study to investigate the impact of joint-audits across a wider set of joint-audit pairings and solo/joint switching options.…”

Abolition of mandated joint‐audit requirements: Impact on audit reporting lag in an emerging capital market

“…Recent scandals (e.g., Germany's Wirecard 2020, UK's Serco 2018/2019, UK outsourcer Carillion 2018, and Gupta family businesses South Africa 2017) have further ignited scholarly, practitioner and policymaker interest in joint-audits. Since becoming a hotbed of attention, there has been growth in joint-audit research (e.g., Abdelmoula & Affes, 2019;Guo et al, 2017;Nekhili et al, 2014;Piot, 2007Piot, , 2008Velte, 2017); however, the overall volume of joint-audit research is scarce relative to other auditing research fields. Consequently, important empirical and theoretical questions remain open and in want of investigation (Hay, 2015(Hay, , 2019Lesage et al, 2017).…”