Study On The Influencing Factors Of Audit Opinions' Change

Since 2001, many big international companies, such as Enron, WorldCom, Merck and Xerox have exposed the fraudulent auditing scandal. As in China, many companies like "Yinguangxia", "Kelong" also have exposed the auditing scandals. The auditor's office that is responsible for auditing these companies as well as the accountants who signed audit report of these companies had been severely punished. These events make the public pay attention to audit issues and it raises the great importance to the Commission and relevant government departments. The scholars all over the world who study audit have warmed up.So far, the world has two major categories which can be divided into four types. The two categories is unqualified audit opinion and qualified audit opinion. In the other country of the world, audit always divides into four types: unqualified opinion, qualified opinion, disclaimer opinion and adverse opinion.In China, we also divide audit opinion into four types. But we have the special type in unqualified opinion that is unqualified opinions with explanatory note(s). In China, we call unqualified opinions with explanatory note(s), qualified opinion, disclaimer opinion and adverse opinion as modified audit opinions (MAOs)Many researchers focus on MAOs audit opinions. According to their researches, they mainly carry out from why the companies receive unqualified audit opinions, in other words, they have studied the influencing factors of MAOs. Generally speaking, there are three kinds of influence First, it caused by financial variables, prior research generally make an analysis from several aspects such as liquidity, operating capacity, solvency, profitability, investment earnings capacity and cash flow rights. Although different researchers come up with various methods and variables to study, they come to the same conclusion, that is, the financial variables. Secondly, it is the influence of earnings management to audit opinions. Generally speaking, most researchers adopt the discretionary accruals to measure earnings management, and there also some researchers use ROE to estimate surplus management. The two methods obtain almost the same result, that is, it is easier for the companies who have bigger earnings management to receive MAOs. Thirdly, it is the influence of corporate governs to audit opinions, which only a few researchers are interested in. They start investigation from two business arrangements: The form of board and property of stock ownership. It has been proved that businesses which set external board are much easier to receive MAOs. On the contrary, the businesses with national stock ownership are more difficult to receive MAOs.However, the researches don't mention the control of audit offices'change which may subjectively influence audit opinions. Furthermore, they neither pay attention to the above three factors'comprehensive effects to audit opinions yet, nor study the phenomenon of audit opinions'difference between current year and front year. In such situation, the influencing factors of audit opinions'change are given by positive analysis in this paper, based on the theoretical analysis of the influencing factors of MAOs. It shows that under the control of audit offices'change, what the internal cause of public limited company's audit opinions'change is and if there is key factor in it, or if there are factors'comprehensive effects to the audit opinions'change and how to influence.Based on the Chinese stock market's data from 2001 to 2005, the companies with changed audit opinions are selected as samples. It obtains 497 companies'data, picking out the data with audit offices'change and deficient data. Due to two different variable tendencies, the samples are divided as good variable trend and bad variable trend to audit opinions. The changes of quick rate, debt ratio, return on assets and total asset turnover are chosen to analyze the influence of the finance of the audit opinions'change. Moreover, it selects the change of the earnings management to study the earnings management's effect to audit opinions'change, in which the earnings management is measured by discretionary accruals. Finally, the corporate governs factor, which judged by properties of stock ownership, is also adopted to obtain the influence of audit opinions'change.Depending on logistic regression, several conclusions are shown as follows, according to two different kinds of samples.(1) The variation of financial data influences audit opinions'change. (2) Companies with rising earnings management are easier to deterioration. By comparison, there is not obvious effect to audit opinions'good change whether businesses are with rising surplus management or not.(3) The audit opinions of the companies with national stock ownership are difficult to change.In addition, it discovers that the audit opinions'change is not only influenced by single factor, but also affected by the comprehensive effects of the factor of finance, earnings management and corporate governs. Based on the conclusions above, it is suggested as follows:(1) Improve the moral criterion of auditors; complete the professional laws and regulations; enlarge the ability of supervisory systems; prevent the attitude change of audit opinions towards different companies.(2) Speed up the"Share Segregation Reform"; improve the national public limited company's quality; maintain the clean environment of audit.