Michael Kend

Dr Michael Kend’s research interests include financial reporting, the market for audit services, and capital markets research. He is a research fellow of the Australian National Centre for Audit and Assurance Research (ANCAAR). He is a former accounting lecturer at ANU (2003 to July 2007), and a former convenor of the Australian Auditing Research Forum held annually at ANU since 2003. He has published in the areas of segment reporting, auditing expertise and corporate law reforms. He has been awarded several grants including from the CPA Australia grant scheme, ARC Linkage and the AFAANZ research grants.

The Future of Audit »

Keeping Capital Markets Efficient

Publication date: August 2010
At a time when increased independence requirements for auditors, legal backing for auditing standards, and increased audit documentation requirements have occurred, this book examines key issues in the market for audit services in Australia. It investigates issues including: the understandability of audit and the state of the audit expectations gap; auditors’ business acumen and industry expertise; the auditors’ use of materiality; whether or not the increasingly prescriptive nature of auditing is creating a distraction from the ‘real’ audit task and stifling auditors’ judgement; whether or not CLERP 9 reforms involving audit partner rotation and restrictions on non-audit service provision are efficient and effective and reactions to the increasing scrutiny of auditors and audit firms by regulators. With its thorough coverage of contemporary issues, this book intersperses the authors’ summaries, interpretations and recommendations with the perceptions, expressed in their own words in order to faithfully convey their candid assessments, of users of audit reports, purchasers and suppliers of the audit product, auditing standard setters and regulators of the audit market.