Debt Dispersion and Auditor Reporting: Evidence from Going Concern Report Modifications

SUMMARY When determining whether to modify their audit reports with a going concern explanatory paragraph for financially distressed clients, auditors are guided by standards to evaluate management’s plan to address financial distress. Prior empirical research has generally modeled this evaluation as a function of broad-based financial statement ratios. In this paper, we examine whether variation within a client’s debt structure impacts auditor reporting. We do so by computing a debt dispersion variable that proxies for debt heterogeneity and creditor coordination effects. We posit that debt dispersion increases the both the complexity and outcome risk of the report modification decision. Both channels predict that auditors are more likely to modify their audit opinions for financially distressed firms with higher debt dispersion. Our results are consistent with this prediction. We document similar such relations between debt dispersion and the incidence of a Type I reporting error and audit effort. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: M41; M42.