A Study on Auditor's Opinion about Consolidated Financial Statements

연결재무제표(聯結財務諸表) 감사의견(監査意見)에 관한 연구(硏究)

Since first introduced on July 1974, consolidated financial statements had been concluded or not depending on decision-makings by companies. But the Securities and Exchange Law as revised on April 1992 specified that any listed corporation must add consolidated financial statements and their auditor's opinion to its business report. foreign-based corporations became subject to the conclusion of the sheets and equity method from the time of business closing on Dec. 1995. Now all of domestic and foreign-based corporations, whether they are controlling or controlled businesses, are subject to consolidated financial statements. Business bankruptcies and restructuring under the economic crisis since the late 1997 raised the necessity of the increased reliability and transparency of consolidated accounting information and significantly changed contents of consolidated audit report. An analysis over the past three years shows that auditor's opinions about consolidated financial sheets are mostly qualified opinions whose proportion is being gradually decreased, while rejected opinions are annually increasing in proportion. When compared to the year of 1998, the numbers of those controlled businesses, and companies under the equity method were all decreased, but rather increased when determined on the basis of such numbers per a corporation. This suggests that corporations are promoting business diversification through business separation and share acquisition and advancing into foreign markets as well as domestic ones. Especially, special contents included in consolidated auditing report show a tendency to increase annually. Based on all these findings, the strengthening of accounting regulation will lead to providing more reliable information related to auditor's opinion about consolidated financial statements and raising the information effectiveness and validity of the statements as publicly notified.