Relationship Between the Audit Report with Modification and the Exchange of Independent Auditor in Listed Companies

Abstract

The economic impact of the audit report with modification has been subject of a large range of researches, whether in the way of checking the influence on the stock prices or implications to the management members, for example. In this way, explanations or prognoses of a report with modification have aroused an interest in the scientific field, as well as researches about the emission of an audit report with clean opinion by pressure of the management members and “opinion shopping”. Considering this situation, this paper aims to check if there is any association between the exchange of the independent auditor and the emission of the audit report with modification on the companies listed in the Securities Commission – CVM on the date of December 31st, 2016, which comprehends 619 companies. However, until September 15th, 2017 (last day of data collecting), four of the reports weren’t found, that means only 615 audit reports were analyzed and, from these, 574 are reports with a clean opinion, 30 reports have one or more qualifications, 2 reports have adverse opinion, and, last, the auditors issued 9 reports with disclaimer of opinion. It was concluded that, among the total of the sample, 26,83%, or 11 companies, changed their independent auditor after receiving an audit report with any kind of modification. This result goes against the international researches about the emission of a report with clean opinion by pressure of the management members and “Opinion Shopping”.

Keywords: Independent auditor; Report with modification; Companies listed.