Origins of the legal requirement to appoint multiple auditors in France and Italy

In both France and Italy there is a legal requirement that two auditors be appointed for statutory audits of public companies. In a recent article, Francis et al. (2009) found that the appointment of two Big 4 auditors for the same audit in France may produce a higher audit quality than if only one Big 4 auditor is paired with a non-Big 4 firm. While the current paper does not address the question whether the appointment of two auditors produces a higher level of quality in a general sense, our investigation seeks to describe the historical evolution and reasons why the appointment of more than one auditor has been and continues to be required for each annual audit in France and Italy. Hopefully, our analysis will provide insights into the legal and social rationales for this unusual type of corporate governance mechanism