Financial Characteristics of Companies Audited by Large Audit Firms

Purpose “ The purpose of this paper is to examine how financial characteristics associated with the choice of a big audit firm with further investigation on the agency costs of free cash flows.Design/methodology/approach “ The sample used for this work includes industrial listed companies from Germany and France. To test our hypothesis, we used a number of logit models, extending the standard model selection audit firm, to include the variables of interest. Following previous work, our dependent dummy variable is Big4 or non-Big4.Findings “ We observed that most independent variables in the German companies show similar results to previous work, but we did not have the same results for the French industry. Moreover, our findings suggest that the total debt and dividends can be an important reason for determining the choice of a large audit firm, reducing agency costs of free cash flows.Research limitations/implications “ This study has some limitations on the measurements of the cost of the audit fees and also generates opportunities for additional searching.Originality/value “ The paper provides only one aspect to explain the relationship between the problems of agency costs of free cash flow and influence in choosing a large auditing firm, which stems from investors\u27 demand for higher quality audits

Stock Splits: Evidence from Mutual Funds

Mutual fund splits occur in high-priced funds after unusually high returns. Split factors are related to the deviation of a fund's price from the mean of all fund prices. Post-split prices are below the mean of other funds' prices. Post-split numbers of shareholders and assets do not increase compared with funds having similar rates of asset growth. However, I find evidence that mutual fund splits bring per account shareholdings back up to normal levels. I argue that signaling, liquidity, and tick size theories do not apply to mutual fund splits. Copyright The American Finance Association 1998.

Ratings, Commercial Paper, and Equity Returns.

The authors present the first evidence that initial ratings of commercial paper influence common stock returns. Highly rated industrial issues of commercial paper, unaccompanied by bank letters of credit, are associated with significantly positive abnormal returns; lower-rated issues are not. The stock price effects of changes in commercial paper ratings also demonstrate the relevance of ratings to the financing of firms. Rating downgrades, especially those that imply an exit from the commercial paper market, produce significantly negative abnormal returns; upgrades have no effects. Initial commercial paper ratings and subsequent reratings appear to help investors sort firms by their future prospects. Copyright 1994 by American Finance Association.