Do investors differentiate between types of component auditors? Evidence from auditor ratification voting

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's Rule 3211 mandates firms to disclose the types of component auditors employed and their contribution to the overall audit. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we examine the effect of the disclosure of component auditor usage on shareholder dissatisfaction. We find that multinational companies (MNCs) reporting higher use of large component auditors (LCAs), defined as component auditors contributing materially to the audit, experience a 17% decrease in shareholder votes against (or abstaining from) auditor ratification compared to MNCs with lower usage. This effect is more pronounced for firms with high institutional shareholding. We fail to find evidence of any effect on firms with the higher usage of small component auditors (SCAs). Our findings are robust to various definitions for treated and control firms. Our results support the view that, on average, LCAs offer higher “local” benefits and impose lower coordination costs compared to SCAs.