관계회사 내부거래가 감사보수에 미치는 영향: 관계회사 상호간 이익실현과 손실발생 기업에 대한 감사인의 차별적 반응

This paper investigates whether related party transactions affect auditor’s decision on audit fee. We classify the related party transactions in our sample into two broad categories: transactions that are likely to results in a profit to the listed firms, and transactions that are likely to result in a loss to the listed firms. Furthermore, this paper examines whether the relations between the related party transaction and auditor’s decision on audit fee are differentiated according to a Big 4 audit firm or not, and KOSPI or KOSDAQ market. In companies with the related party transactions, controlling shareholders can expropriate wealth from minority shareholders in many ways. For example, they can extract cash by selling assets, goods, or services to the company through self-dealing transactions; they can obtain loans on preferential term; they can transfer assets from the listed company to other companies under their control; and they can dilute the interests of minority shareholders by acquiring additional shares at a preferential price (Johnson et al. 2000; Cheung et al. 2006). Prior studies about KOSPI listed firms report that the firms with related party transactions increase discretionary accruals, showing that related party transactions are used as a way of earnings management in Korea (Kim and Woo 2008). Kim and Woo (2008) also find that the market reacts negatively on the related party transactions. Most of the current literature, however, has attempted to measure the size of the related party transactions simply, adding up sales, purchases, and miscellaneous incomes and expenses from the related party transactions (Kim and Woo 2008, 2009; Choi et al. 2011).