Study On The Purchase Of Audit Opinion Under Financial Distress

Now with the continuous development of our market economy,the role of listed companies is more and more important to the market economy.However,due to the environment and the impact of the epidemic in recent years,the performance of listed companies and economic conditions have been a huge impact,many listed companies are facing financial difficulties,more and more listed companies are *ST.In this context,these*ST companies will be very cautious when audited by accounting firms every year.Because for *ST company,it is on the verge of delisting,the annual audit report issued by the accounting firm is very important to it,but its own financial difficulties may affect the audit opinion issued by the accounting firm,the contradiction between the two.In this contradictory situation,in order to obtain satisfactory audit opinions,many *ST companies at the risk of purchasing audit opinions.After the study of public information,it is found that after the promulgation of the new Securities Law,there are many *ST companies appointed small and medium-sized accounting firms that enter the securities audit market as audit institutions.This sign seems to indicate that: *ST company in the use of the gap of policy,the audit institution is replaced by small and medium-sized accounting firms to seek their own needs of audit opinions.In order to prove this phenomenon,this paper selected the case of *ST Xinyi purchasing audit opinions of Shenzhen Tangtang Certified Public Accountants,which was identified as the purchase of audit opinions in 2021,for analysis and research.Based on the principal-agent theory and the cash flow theory,this paper analyzes the financial predicament of *ST Xinyi.Based on the incomplete contract theory,the audit rent-seeking theory and the signal transmission theory,this paper identifies and recognizes the purchase behavior of *ST Xinyi’s audit opinion.This paper analyzes the specific strategies of*ST Xinyi to purchase audit opinion under financial distress--to seek down accounting firm and to seek to retain audit opinion.Then it analyzes the motivations and consequences of the purchase behavior of *ST new Billion audit opinion,and finally draws the relevant enlightenment.This paper finds that listed companies in financial distress are more likely to collude with accounting firms to purchase audit opinions by making use of information asymmetry,and their strategies for purchasing audit opinions are different due to the impact of their own financial distress.Moreover,because the purchase behavior of audit opinion is not easy to be qualitative,it has become a more difficult problem to solve in our capital market.In addition to the difficulty of judgment,the influence of purchasing audit opinions is also very bad.This is because it reflects from the side that as an independent third party accounting firm does not play the function of economic supervision,but conspires with listed companies to commit fraud and issue false audit opinions for listed companies.This behavior not only deceived the investors in the market,but also disturbed the fair market order and affected the independence of the audit work.