A study of audit opinions before and after the 2008 financial crisis: how do crises affect the reliability of financial information?

Abstract

The past Global Financial Crisis caused real difficulties in business across the world, and Spain was no exception. In an environment of uncertainty and turmoil, increased focus on the reliability of financial information must be made and, in turn, on audit reports. The recent literature identifies construction and manufacturing as the most affected sectors, as well as changes of auditor as a consequence of an unfavorable audit opinion. This project aims to analyse the impact of the 2008 crisis on audit opinions by studying a sample of 320 large companies in Catalonia, and see which types of material misstatements are most common before and after the crisis and other company characteristics. Our research reveals that there are indeed more qualified opinions after the crisis than before, and that the majority of misstatements found after the crisis are related to lacking information on related parties. We find that the majority of the most affected companies are from the manufacturing sector, but there is no evidence that companies with more qualified opinions change auditor more often.