客户潜在法律风险、审计师规模层级与审计应对策略差异

Latent Legal Risk of Clients, Tiers of Auditors＇ Size, and the Diversity of Coping Strategies

文章以2001—2004年中国上市公司为样本,实证分析了在年报出具后由于当年年报披露违规而遭受监管处罚、潜在审计风险与不同规模审计师事前的应对策略。研究发现：相对于小型审计师,大型审计师对于客户潜在风险具有较好的事前应对,但是不同层级的大型审计师应对策略存在差异;＂国际四大＂和＂本土前五大＂对日后遭受监管处罚的客户事前没有索取风险溢价,但是出具了更为严格的审计意见,而＂本土次五大＂主要采取索取风险溢价的策略,在审计意见出具严格程度上与小型所没有区别;＂国际四大＂和＂本土前五大＂在审计报告中事前披露违规行为的概率相对较高,而＂本土次五大＂则与小型审计师没有差异。上述发现说明：＂国际四大＂、＂本土前五大＂具有较高的独立性和审计质量;＂本土次五大＂的审计独立性和审计质量与＂国际四大＂和＂本土前五大＂存在一定差异。这提醒我们,中国资本市场审计学术研究及审计监管实践,应考虑审计师的分层研究和分层监管。

The related literature about audit risk and audit strategy embodies two characteristics. The first characteristic is that the existing literature pay more attention to explicit audit risk, but the attention to implicit audit risk is not enough. The second characteristic is that the existing literature customarily divides the auditors into two groups： the big auditors and small auditors, and it partly covers the heterogeneity among auditors which located in different tiers. China is a rising market economy country, and the audit market segmentation has not been completed, and the audit market competition is stiff, so the auditors located in different tiers may take different competition strategies. This paper argues that, we should divide the Chinese auditors into 4 tiers, that is international Big4, the domestic first tier BigS, the domestic second tier BigS, and small auditors. On this foundation, we should investigate the di versity of the risk identification ability before supervisory punishment among auditors located in different tiers, and investigate the diversity of strategies dealing with audit risk before supervisory punishment among auditors located in different tiers. It will help to our comprehensive understanding of Chinese audit market. This paper adopts China listed companies during year 2001-2004 as a sample, to empirically study the coping strategy＇s diversity of different tiers auditors to latent legal risk before supervisory punishment of clients. It finds that, the big auditors take better prior counter measure, but the different tiers big auditors take different strategies. The Big4 and the domestic first tier Big5 report strict audit opinion on the latent legal risk before supervisory punishment of clients, and they do not ask for risk premium for the latent legal risk, but the group of domestic second tier Big5 just takes the measure of asking for risk premium. The Big4 and the domestic first tier Big5 are apt to disclose the illegal items of clients in the audit report, but the second tier Big5 has no difference from small auditors in this respect. It argues that, the Big4 and the domestic first tier Big5 are more independent from clients and are superior in audit quality. Compared with Big4 and domestic first tier Big5, there is still some way to go in audit independence and audit quality for other auditors. It also argues that, researchers should pay more attention to the study of multilevel auditors, and the regulator should lay stress on multilevel monitoring. This paper＇s contribution to audit research is.. it adopts posterior risk, that is supervisory punishment risk after event, as the audit risk index, and it divides the auditors into 4 tiers but not 2 tiers, and it finds that the auditors located in different tiers take different strategies to deal with the latent legal risk of clients.