The effect of audit partner rotation on audit quality

Background: The new Spanish Audit Law (2015) includes stricter safeguards related to mandatory audit partner and audit firm rotation than the former Law (2010). These safeguards imply a high cost for themarket, but evidence about their convenience for accounting information users is not conclusive. Objective: To provide evidence about the effect of mandatory audit partner and audit firm rotation onaudit quality. Specifically, this report analyzes if audit partner rotation has a positive influence on auditquality by itself or it must be strengthened by audit firm rotation. Method and sample: This study focuses on the observable audit partner and audit firm changes in the Spanish market. The sample consists of the big companies with financial distress symptoms. The issuance ofa going concern uncertainty acts as a proxy of audit quality. We analyze if financially distressed companies which changed their audit partner or audit firm have a higher probability to receive a going concernqualification. Results: The results show that audit partner rotation doesn't affect audit quality. Moreover, audit firmrotation by itself or together with audit partner rotation doesn't influence audit quality. Conclusions: High cost safeguard measures have been imposed on the market but they have not demonstrated to be any effect on audit quality. (c) 2017 ASEPUC. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.