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

Table 1: Number of reports examined over the period Year Number of reports Number of Companies Year Number of reports Number of Companies 2010 57 46 2016 610 18 2011 162 114 2017 623 10 2012 498 342 2018 606 17 2013 551 90 2019 107 3 2014 575 36 2020 30 - 2015 583 15 2010 to 2020 4 402 691 The review of the reports led to an initial taxonomy of the opinions expressed. The views expressed are divided into five major groups: reports without reservations and observations (01); reports with reservations (02); reports with comments (03), reports with remarks and findings (04); and finally, writes with refusal to certify (05) 9 The reasons that led to the formulation of these reservations are ten in number. Out of 304 counted reports, 288 are used . 10 Year . Their breakdown by reason is given in Table 2. Table 2: Breakdown of reports by type of reservation Number of reports Uncertainty 88 Limitation of work 39 Accounting principles 40 Non-recognition of transactions and provisions 27 Commitment to pensions and leave 37 Non-compliance with consolidated principles 44 Refusal to certify 13 Reports with reservations 288 a) Choosing the date of the event One of the hurdles of informational content event testing is the problem of identifying the announcement date. Previous research reveals that it is difficult, if not impossible, to specify a single (or pure) event date that represents the date of the public announcement of reserve notices for all companies. For each of the companies selected, five dates was noted: the date of the General Meeting; the date of signature of the statutory auditor in the annual and consolidated report; the date of the end of the financial 9 Certain reports are excluded from this classification; these are reports in which reserve elements are brought together in accordance with the standards of the Compagnie Nationale des Commissaires aux Comptes (CNCC) but which have not been formally mentioned in the paragraph reserved for the opinion of the auditor. Sixty-seven reservations of this type over the study period are observed. For this category of reservations, the tests concerned are carried out separately and, out of caution, only the reservations formally issued by the statutory auditors are retained for the empirical study. 10 For three types of reserves, due to low numbers, event tests are not carried out. year; the date of publication of informations in the Bulletin d’Annonces Légales Obligatoires (BALO); the date of announcement of reservations in the press. It appeared that the report’s publication in the BALO occurred after the date of signature by the auditor. As for the publication of reservations in the press, this practice is almost non-existent since only three announcements are listed there. Three hypotheses has been formulated: the first retains a date t0 fifteen days before the General Meeting of Shareholders (GM- 15); the second corresponds to the date of signature by the statutory auditor of the annual and consolidated reports; the third corresponds to the average of the two dates. Unlike the studies carried out in the United States, this study covers all the reservations expressed on the accounts of listed companies. Despite their interesting methodological approaches, the three most important studies in this area [14; 15; 17] have certain limitations, particularly with regard to the informative content of audit reports. Apart from the DDHL study, which uses the reservation “Subject to” and “the refusal to certify,” and the study by [15], which uses the announcement of reservations in the press, the other works are entirely devoted to examining the first category of “subject” reservations. Part of this limitation is linked to the fact that the different types of reserves are not considered to be material elements, in particular by audit professionals in the United States. However, it should be remembered that opinions such as “adverse opinion” and “refusal to certify” can have a pretty different impact from that of “subject to,” even if by the number, the latter is more important. In this study, all the types of reservations and the reasons concerned are examined to carry out various tests in this area. In addition, in previous studies, several methodological obstacles, among which the determination of the date of event are observed. In this regard, DDHL considers a few critical issues in this type of event study: determining the size of the period, determining the date of publication of audit reports, the effect of concurrent information not taken into account by the models, and the rigorous integration of the phenomenon of anticipation. Informational Performance of Audit Reports Content: Case of French Companies Listed on the Stock Exchange during the Decade 2010-2020 5 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXII Issue II Version I Year 2022 ( )D © 2022 Global Journals