Audit Research Case
The purpose of this case is to become more familiar about the context of auditing by making observations
about the market for audit services among publicly-held U.S. companies. You must complete the
equirements listed below and submit this assignment via the Pilot Dropbox by the beginning of class on
Tuesday, Fe
uary 7. The approximate length of your analysis in Part 2 (below) should be
approximately 1,000 words. The paper must conform to the formatting and citations guidelines posted on
Pilot. Also, the text of your paper should be double-spaced. Failure to follow appropriate formatting will
e reflected in your grade for the assignment. Failure to submit the case when specified will result in a
substantial point reduction as the penalty for late submission. Also, the research case submitted must be
each student’s own work, collaboration among students in completing this case is not permitted.
Required:
First, find the most recent proxy statements and annual reports of three U.S.-based, publicly-held
companies which are in the same industry.
Next, your report will consist of the following three parts:
1) For each of the three companies selected, provide the following information (in a table) for the most
ecent fiscal year-end available (as of now, i.e., January, 2023):
a) Name of the company
) Fiscal year-end
¢) Audit fees paid to auditor (do not include fees for “audit related services” in this amount)
d) Name of audit firm
e) Total assets of the company
f) Total cu
ent assets of the company
2) Total liabilities of the company
h) Total cu
ent liabilities of the company
i) Total revenues of the company
This table should be placed at the beginning of this paper. There should be one column of data for each of
the three companies and the rows of the table should be labeled with each of the descriptions (b) through
(i) above.
2) Briefly describe the company’s business operations for each of the companies and discuss you
observations about the data you collected in #1 above. Next, consider these questions: How do the audit
fees for the three companies compare? How are the fees similar or different? Why would you expect the
fees to be similar or different? Your consideration of these questions about the audit fees should be
the central focus of your paper. You may paraphrase information from your sources (with appropriate
citation of your source), but to not include direct quotes of text in this analysis. You must cite you
sources for the information contained in this report. Also, show any calculations necessary to support
your analysis in a footnote or a table. This section should include a
ief introduction and conclusion.
3) Include an appendix (labeled “Appendix A”) which contains the page from the proxy statement which
states the audit fee amount for each company. Using a “cut and paste” approach to insert the information
into the appendix would be the most efficient way to complete this requirement.