We are in doubt on whether the book editors will ever publish this article that questioning the degree of auditor independence. We have repeatedly heard from colleagues (and foes) that papers that touched this issues has been sidelined by unseen upper hands from being accepted in academic publications. However, we choose to remain steadfast to express our concern about auditor indepence. In this article attempt to, albeit in a small scale, discuss and report an objective assessment of this pertinent concept.

Incidents where external auditors do not issue a going concern audit opinion (GC opinion) to companies having severe financial problems have been reported globally. This issue motivated this study : (i) to investigate the effect of selected auditor characteristics in terms of specialization, tenure, and fee on GC opinion issuance and (ii) to examine the moderating effect of management's, family's, and institution's influence on the relationship between auditor characteristics and GC opinion issuance. The study involves 644 Malaysian financially distressed listed companies in the period 2006 to 2012. The results of a panel logistic regression analysis show that auditor characteristics have no relationship with GC opinion issuance. Influential management - measured as the level of their ownership - can dampen the positive relationship between auditor specialization and auditor tenure with GC opinion issuance. The presence of an influential family, on the other hand, can strengthen the positive relationship between auditor tenure and GC opinion. No evidence about an influential institution's impact on the GC opinion process could be found. In conclusion, while auditor characteristics do not affect the possibility of a GC opinion issuance, pressure imposed by influential management and family on the auditor during the audit opinion decision process does have an impact.

Over the last 10 years, Malaysian capital market has made significant progress in instilling an efficient and well-regulated marketplace together with a proper institutional framework for the regulation of the accounting profession. The shareholders and stakeholders interests are safeguarded through high quality corporate financial reporting and corporate governance. It is the aim of the book to provide evidence and research findings on relevant issues. This book is divided into three parts that consists of 11 separate chapters of academic research works. The chapters covered ranging from issues on corporate internet reporting practice, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, auditor independence and Islamic finance.

This book integrates empirical studies and conceptual discussion in the field of accounting and finance in Malaysia and international setting. The aim of this book is to share findings of empirical results as well as conceptual discussion and to provide reading and reference materials on various accounting and finance topics to undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers through relevant information provided. This book consists of ten chapters. Specifically, it is presented into three parts, namely corporate internet reporting and social responsibility reporting, auditor independence and corporate governance and Islamic finance.

Auditors are required to issue going concern opinion (GC opinion) to companies that are incapable to continue their operations in the near future. It is very important for auditors to issue the GC opinion properly because such opinion is the only signal from them on the viability of a company. Investors need such signal before they can make good investment decisions. In Malaysia however, auditors do not want to issue GC opinion to a very large percentage of financially distressed companies. This motivates this paper to discuss the impact of the latest ISA 570 (2016) on GC opinion issuance rate in this country. Overall, we are in the opinion that there is no strong ground to expect the new ISA 570 (2016) to reduce the problem of Malaysian auditors do not issue the GC opinion to many financially distressed companies. This is due to no new stricter measures being introduced in the latest auditing standard. Nonetheless, we propose four actions that can be taken by Malaysian policy makers and standard setters if they want to improve the rate and practice of GC opinion issuance.

This book incorporates selected empirical studies in accounting and finance. All studies were conducted in Malaysia content except one based on Egyptian data. We presented a total of nine chapters. One introductory chapter is followed by one chapter on issues related to auditing. Furthermore, we have two chapters on taxation, a chapter on accounting education and corporate governance respectively, and three chapters on finance. It is hoped that the book is of great value to readers for its meaningful contribution to progress in knowledge, policy making and practice.

This book contains a compilation of studies on selected issues in accounting and finance. These studies are conducted in Malaysian context except one study based in Egypt. The studies cover significant topics in auditing, taxation, accounting education, corporate governance and finance.