Duc Cuong Pham

This research evaluates the differences in financial performance of enterprises before and after privatization aiming to find out the influence of privatization on the enterprises’ performance. The study is based on the audited financial statements of 105 Vietnamese privatized enterprises privatized in the period from 2005 to 2016. Applying the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, the obtained results prove that after privatization profitability and outputs of investigated firms are significantly higher than prior privatization. However, there is no significant change of leverage. Applying a regression model to evaluate the factors affecting financial performance of firms in the research model, it was found out that the proportion of state ownership, economic growth, operating period, enterprise`s size, and business risk have positive influence on the financial performance of research firms. However, the leverage of these firms has a negative impact on the financial performance. In accordance with the obtained results, this study suggests that the privatization process should be continued regardless of firm size or business type. The government should create fair competition environment, remove incentives and supports for State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), manage changes in privatized firms, and enforce the legal system.

This paper aims to explore the interaction between earnings management and audit opinions in the context of Vietnam – an emerging country. For this purpose, two regressions were developed with sample consists of 1,294 firm-years in the period from 2018 to 2020. The first regression model uses Audit Opinion as dependent variable, Discretionary Accruals (DA) as independent variable, and other 8 controlling variables. The results demonstrate that the Discretionary Accruals influence audit opinion, significantly at 0.1 level in the study year. This means the auditor’s probability of issuing modified opinion is positively associated with earnings management and with the attendance of a Big 4 audit companies. Another regression model tests influence of auditor size (measured by Opinion of Auditor) on the interaction between management of earnings and audit opinion (measured by Discretionary Accruals) as independent variable, and other 10 controlling variables. Surprisingly, this model is not statistically significant and this confirms that the appearance of a Big 4 audit companies does not significantly affect the nexus between profit management and audit opinion in the case of Vietnamese listed companies. The results suggest that Big 4 audit firms tend to have higher requirements for the true-and-fair information on the client’s financial statements and often have a tendency to issue modified opinions when the financial statements have material errors, or it is impossible to collect sufficient audit evidence. This finding may enhance the decision-making process of users in various circumstances.

Acknowledgments
This paper is funded by the National Economics University (NEU), Vietnam. The authors thank anonymous reviewers for their contributions and the NEU for supporting this study.