지배주주와 소액주주 사이의 대리인문제가 외부감사에 미치는 영향 : 감사보고시차를 중심으로

In the Korean corporate ownership structure, a small number of controlling shareholders have cash flow rights, which is characterized by their control taken by indirect possession. In such a governance structure, it is required to pay attention to the agency problem between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders rather than to traditional agency problems between managers and shareholders based on the division of possession and management. This research investigates the effects of agency problems measured by wedge between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders on audit report lag. The audit report lag, which is defined as a cumulative period between balance sheet date and audit report date, was measured as a proxy for the audit effort and the timeliness of financial reporting in the previous researches. The previous researches found that as the separation between possession and control of controlling shareholders gets larger, the possibility for the tunneling (transferring the wealth of minority shareholders to controlling shareholders) phenomenon and reported profits to be distorted gets higher. Also, the capital market and external investors do not trust the reported profits because of the possibility for controlling shareholders to take personal gains. In the meantime, it is expected that external auditors will conduct more carefully auditing for firms with larger separation between possession and control in consideration for the possibility for controlling shareholders to take opportunistic actions, and will make efforts to enhance the reliability of the financial statements of the firms. The findings of this research are summarized as follows. Firms with the high level of agency problems between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders, have a positive and significant relation with the audit report lag. This result shows evidence indicating that external auditors appropriately monitor the reported profits of a company in consideration of the possibility for controlling shareholders to take opportunistic actions based on the separation between possession and control.