Institutional Activism, Auditor’s Choice and Earning Management after the Enron Collapse: Evidence from France

Abstract

This paper treats the relation between institutional shareholders, auditor's choice and earning management after the Enron collapse in French context. This context is characterized by the weak of investor protection compared to Common Law countries and the presence of the higher ownership concentration. Three hypotheses are tested around this question. The Empirical results demonstrate that institutional investor has more incentives to control the manager opportunism through the discretionary accruals and influence negatively the appointment of the Big 4 auditors after Enron collapse.