Modifications to the Auditor's Opinion & Emphasis of Matter Paragraphs in the Auditor's Reports of Ukrainian Public Companies Whose Shares are Listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange

The article reviews the content of auditor's reports of Ukrainian public companies whose shares are listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in terms of the presence of modifications to the auditor's opinion and emphasis of matter paragraphs. There are revealed the key shortcomings, as seen by an auditor, in accounting and reporting of these companies. Investigated are the relationship between the modified auditor's report and change of auditor, and compared is the level of scrutiny of the Big Four auditors and those from other audit firms. There are classified and identified the types of grounds for qualified auditor's opinion, and suggested the questions addressed by auditors in the emphasis of matter paragraphs. It was found that often the basis for the auditor expressing a qualified opinion was the inability to obtain audit evidence, whereby the provisions of ACI 501 on inadmissibility during inventory became the most popular basis for the auditor's qualified opinion in this category of reasons. The presence of significant errors, which, however, in the auditor's opinion, were not comprehensive for the financial statements and have been associated with the application of IFRS 1 and 3, were also used as the basis for the auditor's qualified opinion.