Archive of Journal - Financing

Financing – scientific magazine for economy

ISSUE 2022, No. 2, Article 2, Year of publication: 13, June, 2022
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on audit reporting in the open and official stock market

AUTHORS

Darko Tomaš, PhD*; Svetlana Sabljić, PhD**, Edvina Kolarić, BSc***

*Assistant Professor, University of Banja Luka, Faculty of Economics, Department for Accounting and Business Finance
**MBA Senior Assistant, University of Banja Luka, Faculty of Economics, Department for Accounting and Business Finance
***Banja Luka Stock Exchange

ABSTRACT

ARTICLE INFO

Covid-19 has impacted companies’ operations in many ways, including their financial reporting. This impact will certainly be reflected in the auditor’s reporting on financial statements in 2020, and the impact will be particularly significant in the coming years of audit reporting because of the dual negative impact of two inherent risks, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine crisis. The objective of our research is to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the audit reports of companies listed on the open and official stock market. The research was conducted using audit reports of companies listed on the Banja Luka Stock Exchange. Our results show that the Covid-19 pandemic did not have a significant impact on auditors’ reporting in 2020 and that auditors strictly adhered to their standards and rules when issuing audit opinions. The issuers who expressed a negative opinion and refrained from issuing a statement had a positive net result, meaning that the business result (loss) had no impact on the opinion.

Keywords: audit reports, Covid-19 pandemic, stock market, securities

DOI: 10.7251/FIN2202021T

Corresponding author:
darko.tomas@ef.unibl.org