The EU Law on Auditing and the Role of Auditors in the Global Financial Crisis

Hatice Kubra Kandemir 

Durham University - Durham Law School
January 2013

International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Vol. 10, pp. 213-233, 2013 
Abstract:      
In September 2011, the EU Commissioner Michael Bernier explained that “there are weakness in the way the audit sector works today and the crisis highlighted them”. Such weaknesses were not detected for the first time: a few years earlier the problems of the audit sector emerged when Enron collapsed and the chicanery of its auditor Arthur Andersen was revealed to the markets. Since then, auditors and audit firms namely the Big Four have been the subject to the long standing debates not only in the academic world but also in a number of European law and regulations. This paper examines the role of auditors in the global financial crisis of 2008 and whether they actually failed in their role.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 40

Keywords: audit, ISA, Directive 2006/43/EC, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, financial crisis, Big Four

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2314580