The impact of a regulatory change on the fees paid to the auditor: a look at Dutch and German evidence

In this study an analysis is made on the impact of the transition to IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) for first-time IFRS users on the fees paid to auditors. This was tested on Dutch and German data collected partially by hand and partially via Datastream. Due to previous research stating that there is a relation between the fees paid to the auditor and the transition to IFRS on small and medium sized companies (SMEs), our work focuses on large sized companies. When taking in account the same control variables as in previous academic work we found no significant relation between the fees paid to auditors and the transition of IFRS. Our findings were not consistent with out hypotheses. However, we believe our study provides support for the further development of IFRS for SMEs.