Audit of banks as public interest entities: Segmentation and conjuncture of the bank audit market in Ukraine

Independent audit assurance of sustainability reporting is the basis for increasing the credibility of the stakeholders, its transparency and reliability; it is a means of implementing legal liability of the company and the evidence of achievement of its legitimacy to the public. The bases for providing such assurance are the standards of implementation of audit tasks in the sphere of sustainable development. Comparative analysis of international practice as for assurance regarding the SR with local realities, based on the reporting database of Ukrainian GRI companies for the 2005-2014 years, witnessed the initial phase of such practices among Ukrainian companies, and the need to strengthen regulatory efforts to determine the legal status of SR auditing standards in Ukraine, ensuring a legal environment and the development of corporate social responsibility initiatives.

The study examined the determinants of bank stability within the South African banking sector. By controlling for individual bank characteristics and market characteristics, the study determined possible determinants of solvency, a proxy for bank stability, measured by z-score within the South African financial sector. The South African financial sector is highly concentrated but with a significantly large number of banks, the greater portion being foreign owned banks. The business models of some of the financial intermediaries differ from the big four and therefore the influence of the type of business model is of great interest in this study, as it highlights a unique feature of the South African financial sector. The study’s investigation used panel data estimation techniques and found that among the specific bank characteristics, lending activity and capitalization do significantly affect solvency of banks and at sector level concentration was significant. The crisis dummy also revealed that the presence of a financial crisis heightened insolvency. The results have implications for financial institutions and therefore are of interest to regulators, bank management and researchers. Policy prescription in the form of Prompt Corrective Action framework is made to ensure proactive reaction to trends likely to cause instability.

The Internet service sector is characterized as highly competitive, so Internet service providers have to seek ways to offer high-quality services to customers. This study measured the impact of perceived service quality on the repurchase intention of customers with the mediating impact of customers’ price perception. Data were gathered by surveying 405 customers of Internet service providers in Amman (Jordan) using the snowball sampling technique; the questionnaire was shared through social medias. Data were analyzed using factor analysis, regression, path analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicate that service quality factors represented by perceived service quality significantly affect customers’ repurchase intention and price perception (p-value is less than 0.05). Furthermore, price perception partially mediates the relationship between perceived service quality and customers’ repurchase intention, with an estimated power of 0.136. Thus far, the mediating variable that explains and predicts the relationship between perceived service quality and customers’ repurchase intention has been overlooked in the extant literature. Therefore, this study employs the role of price perception as a mediator variable. In addition, it provided an accurate assessment of customers’ perceptions of service quality of Internet providers in Amman (Jordan).