Abstract:

The foundation of sound capital markets lies with effective and independent auditing mechanis- ms. Without properly working auditors it is not possible to ensure a fraud-free corporation. Thus, tighter regulations have become the target for fraud prevention by regulators, beginning with the Sarbanes – Oxley Act (SOX) coming into effect in 2002. As an emerging market, Turkey has fol-lowed the SOX example and updated regulations and audited the audit firms accordingly since.This paper aims to show the differences between audit companies that abide the rules and the audit companies that do not abide the rules. Mann – Whitney U test is applied to data of sanctio-ned audit firms between 2008 and 2017 gathered from Capital Markets Board of Turkey (CMB), and audit firms are compared according to their number of clients, the number of employed au-ditors and ownership type. Analysis results indicate a significant difference between sanctioned audit companies and auditor and client numbers. However, ownership is found not significant.

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