Assessing Joint Audit Efficiency: Evidence from Impairment-Testing Disclosures

We examine the consequences on impairment testing disclosures of auditor-pair choice made by French listed companies where two (joint) auditors are required by law. Managers are likely to manipulate impairment-testing disclosures since it relies on unverifiable fair value estimates (e.g., goodwill). Using a disclosure score for firms composing the French SBF 120 index from 2006 to 2009, we demonstrate that combination of Big 4 / non-Big 4 auditors generate higher impairment-related disclosures levels whereas the other combinations, i.e. two Big 4 or two non-Big 4, tend to decrease the level of impairment-related disclosures. We suggest that heterogeneous auditor pair is less likely to exhibit groupthinking. These results are robust to various controls variables (e.g., size, risk, year and firm fixed effects) and tend to partly challenge results from recent literature.no