审计师轮换：历史变迁和最新发展.pdfVIP

Rotation of Auditors: History and Recent Developments Chew Ng School of Accounting, Banking Finance Logan Campus Griffith University University Drive Meadowbrook Queensland Australia 4131 Telephone: 61 7 3382 1361 Facsimile: 61 7 3382 1128 Email: c.ng@.au Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank Professor Garry Carnegie (the Editor of the Accounting History journal) and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. Rotation of Auditors: History and Recent Developments Abstract Following the recent spectacular collapses of Enron in the US and HIH in Australia, the issue of auditor independence is once again being questioned. One measure proposed to enhance auditor independence has been the mandatory rotation of audit firms after some fixed period of tenure for listed companies. This paper evaluates history of this concept. As early as the beginning of the 20th century some organisations had adopted this policy voluntarily. However, as evidenced in the Du Pont case, the adoption of this policy became an issue when the operations of businesses became larger, more complex and specialised. The concept of compulsory rotation of audit firms was raised for the first time by regulators in the McKesson Robbins case at the SEC hearings in 1939. Over the past seven decades or so, this concept has