A break-even analysis of UK universities

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Can tuition fees be justified? A break-even analysis of the financial statements of UK universities

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An examination of international accounting standard-setting due process and the implications for legitimacy

AcceptedArticleNOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in British Accounting Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in British Accounting ReviewThis paper explores accounting standard-setting by focusing on relative levels of stakeholder and jurisdictional influence in the financial instruments disclosure reporting due process. We draw on legitimacy theory to explain our findings and ask what implications any bias might have for the IASB. This study extends the standard-setting literature in three ways. First, we create a weighted coding system to analyse the content of comment letters. Second, we test for differences in the success rate of comments made by stakeholders and by jurisdictions. Third, we analyse IASB discussion documentation that sheds light on the decision-making process. Previous studies have focused on whether outcome-oriented proposals are ‘influential’ (persuasive) by focusing on success rates measured as proposed changes being accepted. We widen this definition to include whether constituents views are discussed. We find that accounting firms appear to have significantly less influence than other stakeholders. We also find that the IASB reacts less favourably to UK proposals but comments from the US are more likely to be discussed. A lack of fairness (real or perceived) could jeopardise perceptions of the standard-setting due process’ procedural legitimacy and ultimately the IASB’s cognitive legitimacy

Competition, choice and governance in the UK audit market: interview evidence

Research initiated by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of ScotlandThe large listed audit market is dominated by the Big 4 accounting firms; this has led to concerns about the lack of competition and choice in the audit market and the establishment by the Financial Reporting Council of the Market Participants Group. Most stakeholders agree that additional choice in the audit market would be beneficial but should this be left to market forces or should regulatory measures be adopted? This interview based study investigates: the extent of such concerns; to what extent there is a desire to improve audit choice; and the challenges and likely impact of the Market Participants Group’s 15 recommendations made in 2007. The author makes a number of recommendations for stakeholders with an interest in the audit market to consider

The effect of large audit firm mergers on audit pricing in the UK

Pre-print of paper to be published in Accounting and business researc

Improving choice in the UK audit market

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The determinants of the UK Big Firms Premium

Our study attempts to determine whether, and if so why, the large auditing firms are able to earn a premium on their audit work in the UK. We start by confirming the apparent existence of a Big Firm premium during the period 1985-2002. We examine industry specialisation, non audit service fee and monopoly pricing explanations for the premium. The results of our tests of industry specialisation are mixed. There is little evidence that this premium is associated with industry specialisation when specialists are defined at the national level. Significant premium are observed if specialisation is defined at the city level, particularly if the auditor is the industry leader. However, when appropriate allowance is made for endogeneity, by modelling both audit and non-audit fees in a simultaneous equations framework, the Big Firm premium disappears. We find evidence to suggest that non audit fees earned by auditors from their audit clients are positively related to the size of the audit size and vice versa. Finally, when the sample is stratified by the size of audit client, we find no systematic evidence of anti-competitive pricing

UK evidence of auditor brand name and industry specialisation

First draftThere is considerable empirical evidence that after controlling for factors known to affect the level of audit fees, the large international firms earn an audit fee premium. In this paper, we estimate a Big Six premium of 10% to 23% for a large sample of UK clients. Recent studies contend that the development of brand name and industry specialisation reputations is costly and the Big Six firms can expect a return from this investment. We find evidence consistent with brand name returns across most sub-samples of clients. However, the audit fees charged by the Big Six firms are not significantly higher than the fees charged by their non Big Six counterparts for the smallest quartile of clients. An explanation for this finding is that the demand for a firm with a brand name 'bottoms out' below a critical size because of the extra cost. The audit fees charged by the Big Six firms are not significantly higher for the sub-sample where industry specialisation is defined by the size of the non audit fee. An explanation for this result is that there may be an inter-relationship between the pricing of audit and non audit services. Unlike the prior literature, we find scant evidence of returns to industry specialisation. We believe that returns to specialisation are insignificant because the UK Big Six firms are large enough to be considered specialists across all markets