Balance sheet conservatism and audit reporting conservatism

1Division of Accounting, School of Business, NanyangBusiness School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 2Leventhal School of Accounting,Marshall School of Business, University of SouthernCalifornia, USA Correspondence Clive Lennox, Leventhal School ofAccounting, Marshall School ofBusiness,University of SouthernCalifornia, 3670TrousdaleParkway, Los Angeles,CA90089,USA. Email: [email protected] Abstract Financial reports are prepared on a going-concern (GC) basis rather than a liquidation basis even when companies are highly distressed. This allows distressed companies to report book values of assets that greatly exceed their liquidation values, implying a lack of conservatism in the balance sheet. We argue that auditors issue goingconcernopinions inorder towarn investors about this lackofbalance sheet conservatism. This argument leads to two testable hypotheses. First, for companies that are at risk of bankruptcy, auditors aremore likely to issue GC opinions when the book values of assets under the GC assumption are high relative to the expected liquidation values of assets (i.e., when the GC assumption causes the balance sheet to lack conservatism). Second, for companies that enter bankruptcy, the issuance of a prior GC opinion has predictive information content with respect to thewedge between the book values of assets and the future liquidation values of those same assets. Our results strongly support both hypotheses. The findings are important because they indicate that conservative audit reporting helps to compensate for a lack of conservatism in the balance sheet, which arises because the GC assumption permits the book values of assets to exceed their liquidation values.