Alain Schatt

Professor

Alain Schatt is Full Professor of Financial Accounting at HEC Lausanne, University of Lausanne, where he teaches courses in financial reporting, auditing, and corporate governance. He earned his PhD in Business Administration and has held academic positions at several institutions before joining HEC Lausanne in 2013. Alain’s research focuses on financial reporting, audit markets, and corporate governance, with particular interest in the economic consequences of audit regulations, auditor independence, and disclosure practices.He has published extensively in leading journals such as Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, European Accounting Review, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, and Accounting in Europe.

Since 2005, France is the only European country requiring mandatory joint audits for companies listed on the stock market. In the Green Paper issued in 2010, entitled “Audit policy: Lessons from the crisis”, the European Commission proposed the introduction of mandatory joint audits for European listed companies to limit audit market concentration. However, the new European regulation passed in 2014 does not include the obligation to hire two auditors who co-sign the audit report. Nevertheless, some countries (e.g., The Netherlands, the UK) still discuss the opportunity to introduce mandatory joint audits, which leads us to ask the following question: Should other countries introduce mandatory joint audits or should France abandon this specific system? To provide some answers to this question, we summarize the academic literature on joint audits in France to better understand its economic consequences. Overall, empirical research shows that, when compared to other European countries, the French market is not less concentrated (in terms of audit fees captured by Big 4 firms), but companies pay more audit fees without any significant improvement in audit quality (and financial reporting quality). Additional evidence shows that audit quality and audit fees are sensitive to the pair of auditors. However, balanced worked between a Big 4 firm and a non-Big 4 firm, which was suggested by the European Commission, does not lead to a better quality-price ratio of audit services. Taken together, the findings suggest that the joint audits system is not efficient, because the quality-price ratio of audit services in France is worse than that of other countries. Based on the Danish experience, we posit that the abandonment of mandatory joint audits in France may reduce audit fees without any reduction of audit quality.
The fifth annual FAR Conference was held on Monday June 22, 2020. As a result of the circumstances, the event took place in an online, Covid-19-proof setting. Still, almost 200 participants from all over the world registered for this virtual meeting. About 50 percent of these were academics. The other 50 percent consisted of students, practitioners, regulators and government officials. This strengthens our belief that a broad group of stakeholders appreciates the work of our Foundation. The theme of the conference was intentionally broad: ‘academic and practitioner insights into audit quality’. This theme seamlessly fits with FAR’s main purpose, which is facilitating knowledge development and knowledge dissemination concerning audit quality. In this booklet, we proudly present the summaries of the five conference presentations. At the end of each article, a selection is included of three Q&A’s from the Q&A sessions that took place after each presentation. We hope you will enjoy reading the summaries and viewing the presentations and Q&As, and we are looking forward to meeting you again, hopefully ‘in the flesh’, next late Spring 2021.  
Since 2005, France is the only European country requiring mandatory joint audits for companies listed on the stock market. In the Green Paper issued in 2010, entitled “Audit policy: Lessons from the crisis”, the European Commission proposed the introduction of mandatory joint audits for European listed companies to limit audit market concentration. However, the new European regulation passed in 2014 does not include the obligation to hire two auditors who co-sign the audit report. Nevertheless, some countries (e.g., The Netherlands, the UK) still discuss the opportunity to introduce mandatory joint audits, which leads us to ask the following question: Should other countries introduce mandatory joint audits or should France abandon this specific system? To provide some answers to this question, we summarize the academic literature on joint audits in France to better understand its economic consequences. Overall, empirical research shows that, when compared to other European countries, the French market is not less concentrated (in terms of audit fees captured by Big 4 firms), but companies pay more audit fees without any significant improvement in audit quality (and financial reporting quality). Additional evidence shows that audit quality and audit fees are sensitive to the pair of auditors. However, balanced worked between a Big 4 firm and a non-Big 4 firm, which was suggested by the European Commission, does not lead to a better quality-price ratio of audit services. Taken together, the findings suggest that the joint audits system is not efficient, because the quality-price ratio of audit services in France is worse than that of other countries. Based on the Danish experience, we posit that the abandonment of mandatory joint audits in France may reduce audit fees without any reduction of audit quality.
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