| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立屏東科技大學 === 財務金融研究所 === 104 === Following the 2004, ther are many major accounting scandals, such as Procomp fraud, Infodisc Technology Co and Summit Computer Technology ensued. Consequently, many investors lost their wealth and the independence of accountants took a major blow. Thus, Taiwan emulated the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and, in December 2007, after Taiwan’s Accounting Act was amended, accountant rotation articles were included with the aim of restoring the investors’ confidence in the independence of professional accountants.
In the past, a string of financial crises caused competent authorities and investors to develop a keen suspicion as to whether the examination opinions issued by accountants were appropriate. They wondered whether accountants would be able to use their examination opinion reports to alert the public and bring attention to the company’s financial problems before it experienced a financial crisis. When faced with a company experiencing financial crises, if accountants are to issue opinions that shows concern towards the continuation of operations, the two major factors of “economic dependence” and “reputation preservation” must be taken into consideration. Thus, this study comes from the perspective of corporate governance to explore the impact of accountant issued opinions which shows concern towards the continuation of operations. For a company, the costs associated with changing accountants are not particularly high; thus, in order to avoid being replaced, accountants may compromise their independence in an effort to satisfy their clients. Additionally, the number audit litigations resulting from the domestic businesses failures is not great, thus the impact of the “reputation preservation” incentives for accountants issuing examination opinions is also reduced. With respect to the issuance of examination opinions, this study reveals that when the client company’s director/supervisor holding ratios and non-director/supervisor major stock holders’ holding ratios is higher, the accountant will be less likely to issue an examination opinion that shows concern towards the continuation of operations. However, if the ratio of the equity pledges of the client company’s director is higher or the chairman is also acting as managing director, the accountant will be more likely to issue opinions that show concern towards the continuation of operations.
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