Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments December 17, 2012 erstellt
Description:
In Belgium, all “large” companies are legally required to appoint a statutory auditor. The thresholds of the criteria to be considered “large” are, however, not that large. Consequently, many relative small companies in Belgium are legally required to appoint a statutory auditor. The evidence on the added value of auditing in small companies remains to date, however, rather scant and is often contradictory. In this study, we, therefore, tried to assess if companies in Belgium would still appoint an auditor if they would no longer be required to do so. Additionally, we also examined which factors would contribute to the voluntary appointment of auditors by companies in Belgium. Our results (based upon an email questionnaire, n=288) show that the majority (nearly 65%) of companies in Belgium would still appoint an auditor if they would no longer be required to do so. The most important reasons why companies would keep on hiring an auditor (i.e., the added value of the audit) are the fact that audits improve the credibility of financial statements, the fact that audits improve the internal control systems of companies, and because audits impose financial discipline on a company. Furthermore, our study indicates that larger companies, companies with more shareholders, and listed companies are more inclined to voluntarily appoint an auditor