Global Journal of Management and Business Research, D: Accounting and Auditing, Volume 22 Issue 2

Informational Performance of Audit Reports Content: Case of French Companies Listed on the Stock Exchange during the Decade 2010-2020 Assoumou Menye Oscar Summary- Proliferation of financial scandals in past decades has caused significant changes both in the financial sector and in the economy in general, leading to a tightening of the rules for assessing economic equilibrium, assessing health and economic profitability of companies. In this context marked by the worsening of a terrible pandemic (covid-19) which upsets’ managerial practices, the search for reliable sources of information becomes a priority for survival. Also, the audit report appears to be a reliable, credible source of information likely to improve business decision-making. At the level of this article, we examine and analyze 4402 annual reports of 691 listed companies over a decade (2010-2020) and measure the effect produced by the presence (absence) of an auditor and the audit report that he emits. The latter appears as a potential double signal, which could impact the eyes of partners, in particular creditors, investors and shareholders. This contribution is particularly interested in the study of the behavior of shareholders around the dates on which the auditor’s issue reservations on certain accounting items likely to affect the financial statements materially. Thus, the impact of the auditor's report should be understood by studying the evolution of company prices at the time of its publication. The results gotten show that reservations and refusals to certify expressed by auditors harm stock market prices. However, the choice of the announcement date is essential. Among the three hypotheses retained concerning the date of the event, it seems that fifteen days before the date of the general meeting, the announcement of reserves becomes public, and investors react unfavorably to this bad news. Keywords: statutory auditor, audit report, information content, date of event, reservations. I. I ntroduction he company’s is often considered a complex entity whose various activities and the requirement of economic performance require regular and permanent control. Given the importance of these issues, it is essential that the diverse internal and external control systems are constantly imposed on the companys’ to improve the efficiency and functioning of its activities. Author: Senior Lecturer, Head of Department "Finance and Accounting”, ESSEC University of Douala. In general, the issuance of an audit report meets different normative and legislative standards [2, 33]. Indeed, each country has its regulations which distinguish it, but also which differ from other countries, which makes necessary the use of a single model of the audit report that could be applied to all contexts, like the international audit report. The role assigned to the external auditor consists of giving his opinion on the accounts and the economic statements of the companies as well as on the various information such as the activity reports provided to the shareholders. He is thus the guarantor of the regularity and the sincerity of the data presented in the context of carrying out the due diligence deemed necessary according to the profession’s standards. This description of the auditor's role shows that he is indeed a regulator of the accounting quality and financial information. However, it should be noted that this task requires permanent control of the company’s accounting system [7]. The external auditor's report is often considered a significant communication tool for users of financial statements. It is, therefore, interesting to study the auditor’s role, as an intermediary between the company and external investors. However, it’s possible to understand this role through a theoretical and econometric analysis of the informative content of the auditor's report and, in particular, of the reservations that he has formulated. This contribution attempts to answer an essential question: what behaviors do shareholders adopt around the dates on which auditors issue reservations on certain accounting items likely to affect the financial statements materially? To provide some answers, we wanted to understand the impact of the auditor's report through the study of the evolution of company prices at the time of its publication. In the first section, we will make a synopsis of the primary research carried out in the field, the second section will detail the approach followed for the collection of data, the sources of the data, the rules retained in the constitution of the sample, the methodology adopted as well as than statistical tests. A third section after that will present the various tests T 1 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXII Issue II Version I Year 2022 ( )D © 2022 Global Journals e-mails: oscar_assoumou@yahoo.fr , oscar.assoumou@gmail.com