Should PCAOB Disciplinary Proceedings Be Made Public? Evidence from Sanctions against a Big 4 Auditor

SUMMARY: In our paper “Client Stock Market Reaction to PCAOB Sanctions against a Big 4 Auditor” (Dee et al. 2011), we examine stock price effects for clients of a Big 4 audit firm when news of sanctions imposed by the PCAOB against the audit firm was made public. These PCAOB penalties were the first against a Big 4 auditor, and they revealed information about quality-control problems at the audit firm that were not publicly known until the sanctions were announced. Our analysis of stock prices suggests that investors in clients of the penalized Big 4 firm reevaluated their perceptions of the quality of the firm's audit work after learning of the sanctions. The negative stock price effects for the firm's clients were consistent with investors inferring that the financial statements were of lower quality. In the paper, we conclude that investors find information about PCAOB sanctions against audit firms to be relevant in assessing audit quality and use that information in setting stock prices for audit firm...