VI. CONCLUSION
Audit tenure negatively affect firm’s value as proxied by P/E, P/B, and Tobin’s Q.
This indicates that the longer the external auditor provides audit services to a client or
company, the lower the company’s value as reflected by negative market response. Longterm
audit tenure potentially changes the relationship between auditor and client from
professional relationship to family-like relationship. The later would severely threat auditor
independence. Even though statistical analysis reveals that the longer the audit tenure the
lower the client’s value, it does not necessarily follow that auditor can only provide audit
service to a client at once. Regulation in Indonesia explicitly allows audit firms to provide
audit service to client for maximum of six consecutive years. This mandatory rotation may
become solution to ensure that professional relationship between auditor and client can be
maintained. Law enforcement is the key success to enable this regulation works properly.
Companies audited by big audit firms tend to show greater value. Market views big
audit firms to have greater capacity and capability in increasing information reliability of
client’s financial statements and consequently market responds this positively thus it
increases company’s value as proxied by P/E, P/B, and Tobin’s Q. Even though statistical
analysis shows that companies audited by big audit firms tend to show greater value because
big audit firms tend to have greater capacity and capability in increasing information
reliability, it does not necessarily follow that nonbig audit firms are unable to produce
reliable information at all. However, it is a big challenge for nonbig audit firms to improve
their image as well as capacity and capabilities in order to increase their competitive
advantages so that they can compete with brand name audit firms.
Companies whose audited financial statements are with unqualified audit opinion tend
to have greater value. This is because unqualified audit opinion is the most positive and
strongest level of audit opinion that increases market response and confidence so that
company’s value is also positive. Up to this moment, it is possible for listed companies to
receive audit opinion other than unqualified opinion. This means that there is tolerance for
quality of financial statements prepared by managements of listed companies. In the future it
is expected that there is strict and enforced regulation about audit opinion criteria for being
continuously listed on the stock exchange. In other words, there is no tolerance at all for
companies with audit opinion other than unqualified opinion to be able to publicly trade their
stocks in the market. The main purpose of this proposed regulation is to promote good
governance that managements must prepare financial statements in accordance with
accounting standards