国家审计能否抑制超额商誉?——基于央企控股上市公司的经验证据

Can Audit Institutions Curb Excessive Goodwill——Empirical evidence from listed companies controlled by central SOEs

并购热潮的兴起给资本市场带来了新鲜的“血液”,但确认的巨额商誉也为资本市场埋下了一颗“定时炸弹”。本文基于审计署2010-2018年公布的央企集团财务收支审计结果公告,考察了国家审计对央企上市公司超额商誉的影响。研究结果表明,国家审计能够显著抑制央企上市公司的超额商誉。进一步发现,高质量的社会审计与国家审计在抑制超额商誉上能够发挥替代作用;此外,还发现国家审计对超额商誉的抑制作用主要体现在内部控制水平低和管理层未持股的样本公司中,这说明国家审计对超额商誉的抑制作用在不同公司治理特征的样本中存在显著差异;国家审计通过缓解信息不对称,约束管理层的机会主义行为,进而抑制超额商誉。

Although the merger and acquisition boom has brought fresh blood to the capital market,the huge goodwill confirmed is also a“time bomb”for the capital market.Based on the announcements of audit results of financial revenues and expenditures of state-owned enterprises released by the National Audit Office of China from 2010 to 2018,this paper examines the impact of government auditing on excessive goodwill of listed companies controlled by central SOEs.The results show that government auditing can significantly restrain the excessive goodwill of listed companies controlled by central SOEs.Further research shows that high-quality private-sector auditing and public-sector auditing can substitute each other in suppressing excessive goodwill.In addition,the study also finds that the inhibitory effect of government auditing on excessive goodwill was mainly reflected in the sample companies with low internal control level and no shareholding by the management,which indicates that such inhibitory effect is significantly different in the sample companies with different corporate governance characteristics.The mechanism test shows that government auditing restrains the opportunistic behavior of the management by alleviating the information asymmetry and then curbs excessive goodwill.