ESTIMATION OF BANKRUPTCY RISK BASED ON AUDIT OPINIONS: CASE STUDY IN ROMANIA

Abstract

In a world focused on growth, capital accumulation and continuous economic development, it is important to build safety levers to ensure that investors see a return on their investments. Media outlets, brokers, financial institutions and the business environment are now referring, more than ever, to investment policies not only of companies, but also of individuals with sustainable economic capital. Platforms such as Forex, e-Toro, Capital.com, Libertex, cryptocurrency trading platforms and free access to the Stock Exchange now make it extremely easy for third-party investors, with promises of significant returns in a very short period of time. But are all these exhortations and “marketing guns” directed at individuals’ finances devoid of speculative interest? The purpose of this paper is to identify a model of bankruptcy risk estimation that is based on the opinions of audit companies regarding the reasonableness of annual financial statements and their associated fraud risk. This paper presents an empirical approach to the insolvency phenomenon, based on the opinions of the auditors who classify the audited companies as having an associated fraud risk. The study was conducted at the level of companies on the main trading market of the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The results show that an audited company as having classified by auditors as an associated fraud risk is at least one step closer to bankruptcy, as opposed to companies without an assessed risk of associated fraud. The ability of audit companies to contribute to bankruptcy risk estimation models by flagging fraud risk, based on analysis of financial statements, represents a recurring problem in the specialized literature. This paper brings added value in establishing viable models of bankruptcy risk for big companies on the market.