Do publicly traded companies engage in opinion shopping after receiving a going concern audit opinion? Evidence from U.S. firms in the post-SOX era

Audit opinion shopping continues to be of significant interest to regulators and is also of interest to investors and the public. This study examines whether in the post-SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) era, publicly traded companies in the U.S. engage in the act of shopping for audit opinions after receiving a going concern opinion (GCO). We further examine whether auditor firm size (Big 4 versus non-Big 4) affects such activities. Using data from Compustat and Audit Analytics we identify financially distressed publicly-held U.S. firms between 2004 and 2015. Adopting the framework developed by Lennox (2000), we examine the difference in the probabilities between auditor switching and no-switching scenarios. We find evidence that public companies in the U.S. who receive GCOs are successful in shopping for clean audit opinions in a subsequent period. We also find that audit opinion shopping activities are more common among public companies who switch to non-Big 4 auditors as opposed to those who switch to Big 4 auditors. Our paper fills the gap in the literature by examining whether, in the post-SOX era, publicly-held firms in the U.S. engage in the act of shopping for audit opinions, after receiving a GCO.