Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Financial Auditor And Sustainability Reporting: Does It Matter?, Belen Fernandez-Feijoo, Silvia Romero, Silvia Ruiz

Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The objective of this paper is to investigate the yet-to-develop assurance market, its links with the mature auditing market, and the role that the Big4 auditing firms (KPMG, EY, PwC, and Deloitte) play in the former. We use data submitted to the Global Reporting Initiative by companies in 18 countries, for the years 2011–2013, in order to obtain a global overview that allows generalization of the results. We find higher levels of disclosure and increased credibility of sustainability reports (SRs) when the financial auditor is a Big4. Companies audited by a Big4 are more likely to assure the SR than …