파트너연고 감사인변경과 회계정보 가치관련성의 관계 (Auditor Changes Following Partner Familiarity and Their Relations with Value Relevance of Accounting Information)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국회계학회
· 수록지 정보 : 회계학연구 / 39권 / 3호 / 135 ~ 177페이지
· 저자명 : 이재은

초록

선행연구(Blouin et al. 2007; Vermeer et al. 2008 등)에서는 감사담당 파트너의 소속 회계법인(감사인) 이동을 따른 고객회사의 감사인변경을 “파트너연고 감사인변경(auditor changes following partner familiarity)”이라고 표현하였다. 국제적 대형회계법인의 급격한 변동이 있었던 2000년대 초, 국내에서도 안진회계법인과 Deloitte가 새로 회원계약을 체결한 후에 Deloitte의 종전 회원법인이었던 안건회계법인(“안건”)은 2005년 3월에 한영회계법인(“한영”)과 통합하였다. 이 통합은 안건 파트너와 회계사들의 소속이동을 통해 이루어졌는데, 이에 맞추어 다수 안건 고객회사들이 한영으로 감사인을 변경한 것은 외관상으로 위 선행연구에서 언급한 파트너연고 감사인변경 사례로 볼 수 있다. 위 상황을 기초로 한 본 연구의 연구대상은 2005년 안건 고객회사 105개이며, 연구대상기간은 2002년부터 2007년까지 표본이다. 최종 표본은 결측치 등 제외 후 576 기업 · 연도이다(이 중에서 안건에서 한영으로 감사인을 변경한 실험표본[Follower]은 409 기업 · 연도, 타 감사인으로 변경한 통제표본[Non-Follower]은 167 기업 · 연도이다).
파트너연고 감사인변경기업은 공격적 이익조정 등 감사인 교체비용이 높을 수 있으며(Blouin et al. 2007), 이에 따라 파트너연고 감사인변경이 감사인의 외관상 독립성을 훼손한다는 부정적 인식을 줄 수 있다. 동시에 안건과 한영의 통합은 감사인 합병과 유사하게 효율성 향상 등을 통한 감사품질 개선효과(Choi et al. 2013 등)를 가질 수도 있다. 본 연구는 감사인변경 전 · 후 및 비파트너연고 감사인변경기업과 비교할 때 파트너연고 감사인변경기업의 회계정보에 대한 투자자들의 인식에 차이가 있는지 조사한다. 본 연구의 초점은 파트너연고에 따른 감사인 독립성 훼손가능성(부정적 측면)과 감사인통합의 감사품질 개선효과(긍정적 측면)의 상반된 측면이 투자자들의 인식에 어떻게 영향을 끼치는가에 있다.
연구 결과, 파트너연고 감사인변경기업의 감사인변경 이후 순이익 가치관련성은 비파트너연고 감사인변경기업보다 유의하게 낮았다. 이러한 결과는 파트너연고 감사인변경기업의 감사인변경 이후 상대적 가치관련성은 유의한 차이가 나지 않았지만, 비파트너연고 감사인변경기업의 감사인변경 이후 상대적 가치관련성이 증가된 때문으로 파악되었다. 이 결과는 몇 가지 강건성 분석 결과에서도 질적으로 유사하였다. 이 조사결과는 상대적으로 투자자들이 파트너연고 감사인변경을 더 부정적으로 인식함을 나타내며, 동시에 비파트너연고 감사인변경에 대해서는 기업의 자율적 자기선택 과정에서 불리한 비대칭정보(예, 높은 감사인 교체비용 가능성)의 상황이 완화된 것으로 받아들인다고 해석할 수 있다. 본 연구가 흥미를 끄는 이유는 감사인변경에 대한 연구들에서 파트너연고 관점을 고려한 것이 많지 않기 때문이다. 특히 감사인의 연고위협(familiarity threat)은 감사인 윤리기준에서 설명하는 대표적인 감사인 독립성위협 항목의 하나라는 점에서 본 연구의 주제는 중요성을 갖는다. 본 연구의 공헌점은 파트너연고 감사인변경이 갖는 감사인의 외관상 독립성 위협에 대한 투자자들의 부정적 인식을 실증확인한 점이다.

영어초록

Blouin et al. (2007) and Vermeer et al. (2008) find the audit firm changes of audit clients which coincide with their audit partner's transfer of audit firms at the clients of Arthur Andersen(AA), and explained that they are “the auditor changes following partner familiarity.” For this purpose, we refer to the incident that Ahnkwon LLC. (Ahnkwon) - the former Deloitte firm in Korea - substantially finished its business in early 2005(right after completion of 2004 audits), and most of its audit partners transferred to other audit firms in March 2005. In the process, we find that substantial portion of 2004 Ahnkwon partners transferred to Ernst & Young Hanyoung (Hanyoung) - the E&Y firm in Korea - in March 2005, and majority of Ahnkwon's 2004 audit clients also changed the auditors to Hanyoung for 2005 audits. Surviving audit firm in the merger legally succeeds audit partners of the merged audit firms and auditor positions of their clients; however, partner's transfer of the audit firms does not legally mandate to succeed audit partners and auditor positions. If the clients want to change the audit firm to follow the partner's transfer, they have to take auditor selection procedures where they voluntarily appoint the ex-partner's new audit firms as their external auditors.
I empirically find value relevance of accounting information audited by an audit firm in the close of its audit business and its clients change auditors following partner familiarity(the “FOLLOWER”). Through this investigation, I see how the investors perceive such auditor changes since such audit firm integration has two aspects: (i) clients having higher auditor switching costs (e.g. higher earnings management) are more likely to be the FOLLOWER (Blouin et al. 2007), and (ii) audit firm merger would gain economy of size, thereby increasing quasi rents (e.g. when the duplicate offices are integrated by the merger).
The former would indicate impairment of auditor independences in appearance. i.e., the client firms with the higher auditor switching costs are more likely to be the FOLLOWER, and if the investors recognize asymmetric information unfavorable (e.g. higher auditor switching costs) they would negatively perceive such auditor changes. The latter would indicate improvement of audit quality as reported by Choi et al. (2013). However such effects may be restrictive.
Based on these, we see the Ahnkwon's 2004 clients who changed their external auditors to Hanyoung and other audit firms in 2005 to be the FOLLOWER client firms who change auditors following partner familiarity." Ahnkwon's 2004 clients are 105 firms, and final samples are 576 firm-years consisting of experimental FOLLOWER samples of 409 firm-years and control samples (“NON-FOLLOWER”) of 167 firm-years. NON-FOLLOWER samples are Ahnkwon's 2004 clients who changed their external auditors to the other audit firms than Hanyoung in 2005.
Partner's transfer of audit firms is qualitatively different from the audit firm merger in a sense of auditor changes of the clients. More specifically, I assume that the integration of Ahnkwon and Hanyoung has both characteristics of “partner-familiarity following” and “audit firm merger”, but expect that the former’s negative effects on the investor’s perception would be more significant than the latter’s positive effects since Ahnkwon was integrated into Hanyoung in the form of partners and professional staffs' transfers, instead of in the form of merger. Merger would be more unfavorable when the integrated firm succeed the potential legal liability. Before the Ahnkwon-Hanyoung integration, Ahnkwon assumed legal liability for audit failure, which reportedly triggered its farewell to the Deloitte network. If the incremental value relevance of earnings information of the FOLLOWER is significantly negative after the auditor changes, we could conclude that the investors perceive such auditor changes negatively. I found that, comparing to the NON-FOLLOWER's, the relative value relevance of the FOLLOWER's audited earnings information (i.e. the firms who changed auditors following partner familiarity) decreases after such auditor changes. Specifically, the consequences are the combined results that the value relevance of the NON- FOLLOWER's earnings increases after the auditor change while the FOLLOWER's remains with no significant change. Results of the robustness tests by (i) examining the differential earnings response coefficients(ERC), (ii) expanding to transfers of multiple 2004 Ahnkwon audit partners (i.e. three or more partners transferred to the same audit firms other than Hanyoung), (iii) variable values deflated number of shares outstanding (instead of deflated by the lagged total assets in the main tests), (iv) control samples of non-Ahnkwon client samples selected using propensity- score-matching samples are also generally consistent with this finding. Based on this result, I conclude that the investors negatively perceive the auditor changes following partner familiarity. It could be interpreted that possible impairment of the “auditor independence in appearance” caused by such auditor changes following partner familiarity are negatively perceived by the investors.
Contributions of this study is to identify the incidents of auditor changes following partner familiarity in the Korean audit firms' integrations, and such auditor changes following partner familiarity are resulting in the investors' negative perceptions. Moreover, it has additional contributions by expanding the audit researches one step forward in a sense that most existing audit literature has been focusing on audit quality at the audit-firm levels; but this paper extends audit quality studies to the audit partner levels.
This result also has regulatory implications by empirically finding that possible impairment of auditor independence in appearance is negatively perceived by the investors no matter whether the audit quality would be actually worsened or not after the auditor changes. This indicates that the investors recognize this asymmetric information (e.g. higher auditor switching costs) captured by the auditor transfer, and negatively perceive such auditor changes. This has regulatory implications that the investors are negatively reacting to the incidents based on the asymmetric information which happened to be revealed.

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