비상장기업의 전기 한정의견, 감사의견개선 및 감사보수와의 관련성 (The Association between Qualified Audit Opinion, Improvement of Audit Opinion and Audit Fee in Private Firms)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계학연구 / 34권 / 3호 / 21 ~ 51페이지
· 저자명 : 오광욱, 정석우, 유승원

초록

본 연구에서는 2005년부터 2007년까지 금융감독원에 감사보수를 신고한 외부감사 기업 중 비상장기업에 대한 전기 한정의견이 당해 감사보수에 어떻게 반영되는지 분석한다. 또한 전기에 한정의견을 받은 비상장 기업이 당기에 적정의견을 받는 경우 감사보수 수준에 어떠한 영향이 있는지에 대한 실증 결과를 제시한다. 연구결과, 전년도에 한정의견을 받은 기업은 낮은 감사보수를 부담하는 것으로 나타났다. 비상장시장은 시장압력이 낮고 감사인의 책임발생 가능성도 낮으며 감사수임경쟁이 치열하고 기업이 매년 자율적으로 감사인을 교체할 수 있다. 따라서 한정의견을 해당기업에 대한 불이익으로 간주하는 경우 감사인 교체압력을 사용하여 기존 감사인의 보수가 낮아질 수 있을 뿐 아니라 감사인 교체 시에도 초도 보수가 낮게 형성될 것이므로 상대적으로 적정의견 기업보다 감사보수는 낮아진다. 이러한 결과는 감사인보다 비상장기업에게 지나치게 감사계약 협상력이 집중됨에 따른 결과로 해석된다.
전년도 한정의견표본만을 대상으로 당기에 적정의견으로 의견 개선이 이루어진 비상장기업의 감사보수를 분석한 결과에 따르면, 기업 규모가 큰 기업 집단에서 의견 개선 기업의 감사보수가 유의하게 높게 나타났다. 이는 기업의 규모가 클수록 감사의견이 중요해지고 이에 따라 기업이 재무정보를 개선하고 이를 검증하기 위한 감사인의 노력이 감사보수에 반영된 것으로 해석된다.
본 연구는 비상장시장에서도 외부감사가 필요한 기업들에게는 외부 감사의 효과가 나타나고 있음을 보여준다. 구체적으로 비상장기업은 한정의견에 대한 보수 반영성향이 상장시장과 다르지만 외부감사의 중요성을 인식하는 비상장 기업이 외부 감사인이 표명하는 감사의견에 대해 보상을 하고 있음을 보여준다. 이와 같은 결과는 비상장기업에게도 외부감사가 효과가 존재한다는 것을 의미하는 것으로 비상장기업에 대한 외부감사 유용성 논란에 대한 시사점을 제공하여 준다.

영어초록

In this study, focused on private firms, we examine the association between qualified audit opinion and audit fee of firms which are subjected to external audit using 24,128 samples filed their audit fee to financial supervisory services(FSS) from 2005 to 2007. Also we examine the association between improvement of audit opinion and audit fee of current period.
Most of prior studies that examine the relation between qualified opinion and audit pricing document audit fee increase for firms with qualified opinion. They interpret the qualified opinion raises the audit fee because it increases the uncertainty and induces the more investigation effort of auditors. However, most studies use only public companies which are under higher audit risk for auditors and benefits from audits for companies. This study examine the relation between qualified opinion and audit fees for private firm where less audit risk and benefits from audits exist. From the empirical results on private market, we can identify or extend the results of prior studies about the relation between qualified audit opinion and audit pricing with or without market pressure and auditors’ responsibilities. and suggest implications for debates on whether the effectiveness of external audit in private market exists.
In order to examine the relation between audit fees and qualified opinion, we test two hypotheses in alternative forms, using 20,048 firm-year observations from private market and 1,485 firm-year observations with qualified opinion. First, we hypothesize that audit fee of the private firms with qualified opinion in the previous period is lower than that of unqualified firms. Because private market is free from market pressure and more competitive among auditors, we argue that private firms with qualified opinion are able to penalize auditors without much costs by threatening auditors to switch and pay less audit fees than previous year. Auditors also can accept as long as the cost of total audit risk including additional audit risk identified in the previous audit does not exceed decreased audit fees.
Second we argue that if privates firms with qualified opinion in the previous period get unqualified opinion, audit fee may be higher than those who receive the same audit opinion because external auditors will make more effort to investigate the financial information and require compensation for their efforts regardless with the type of market.
The results of this study are as follows: First, consistent with the first hypothesis, we find that private firms with qualified audit opinion in prior year pay lower audit fee in current year while public firms pay higher audit fee. This implies differently from auditors who charge higher audit fee for public firms with qualified opinion in prior year to compensate increased audit risk due to market pressure, auditors of private firms with qualified opinion in the previous year charge less audit fees because of auditor switch possibility and the level of competitiveness in the private firm audit market. Qualified audit opinion is one of factors which induce the firms to change their incumbent auditors. Furthermore, private firms may change their incumbent auditor at any time. These facts make firms to have more audit bargaining power than incumbent auditors. If private firms do not change the auditors because of the possibility of negative reputation that frequent auditor switches may give, they may bid reduced audit fee to the incumbent auditors as an alternative. For this, incumbent auditors may accept the offer because they judge getting new audit clients under the competitive audit market. When private firms actually change current auditors, current audit fee can be discounted due to low balling effect because new auditors estimate higher positive value of incumbency from future engagement. Second, consistent with the second hypothesis, we find that improvement in audit opinion is positively related to current audit fee for private large firm samples. This finding implies that when audit opinion is improved for firms that have, benefits from external audit, auditors may get more compensations for their effort.
In sum, our empirical findings suggest that private firms which consider external audit may give them benefits pay higher audit fee. Also these empirical findings suggest regulatory implications for the recent debates on the effectiveness of external audit in private market.

참고자료

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