Auditor industry specialization and concentration : evidence from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract EN

This study is conducted to investigate the audit practice among Big4 and Non-Big4 audit firms in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Further, the study also examines clients’ characteristic and their market distributions among audit firms.

This study uses audit firm industry market share measure as a proxy for audit firm’s industry specialization.

Sources of data have been retrieved from annual reports of listed companies in Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawal).

The results show that Big4 audit firms acquire, on average, 68.5% of the audit market share in almost all industries and their market share expands over time.

The results also show that audit specialization by industry among audit firms in Saudi Arabia does not exist because Big4 audit firms provide a wide range of audit services to different clients in different industries rather than they offer specialized services to particular industries.

As a result, audit firms in Saudi Arabia perform audit services based on general knowledge gained rather than an industry specific knowledge.