Radical changes have been introduced in the hedge accounting framework by the new IFRS accounting standards. In particular, the hedge effectiveness regime has been completely overhauled and replaced by a strong principles-based charter. The relevance of qualitative assessment procedures has, accordingly, increased making the audit of such assignments immensely challenging. Pronouncements from regulatory bodies providing professional guidance on audit issues of hedge accounting and effectiveness testing have failed to keep pace with this rapid transition, enhancing the complexity of such audit exercises. In the present article, after providing a brief analysis of the contemporary hedge accounting and effectiveness testing provisions, we dwell upon the salient issues connected with the auditor’s predicament and highlight the way forward in the changed environment.

The auditing profession is based on serving the public interest and the exact knowledge regarding the public interest notion is a condition of its advancement. The professions’ commitment to support public interest is factual, a condition of its presence. The individual interest should not be predominant over the public interest and the reconciliation between them is conditional on the application of ethical and professional standards according to the public’s expectations. The ethical values promoted by the ethics code guide the auditors when a conflict arises. Thus, the Ethics Code of the profession protects as much the public interest as the private interest. The study conducted by IFAC in 2010 enables to analyse the position of member bodies in order to outline the significance of the public interest and its association with the auditing profession. The definition of the public interest confers homogeneity to a notion with a broad sense and its evaluation is done through three criteria among which the costs and benefits analysis is the main criterion. The statistical analysis performed, whose starting point was the IFAC study regarding the public interest framework, confirms the extensive meaning of the public interest significance as well as the evaluation criteria. Following the statistical analysis, the appreciation of the public interest definition as ‘too large’ does not meet consensus among the majority of participants to the study. At the same time, the mediation between criteria and their re-ranking represent the main elements of dissension. The authors conclude that the trust generated by defending the public interest is reflected upon strengthening the legitimacy of the profession.

Public internal audit is asked to provide assurance that the public money is well managed and the existing resources are directed, efficiently and in line with the law, towards the real problems and in respect with the public interest. The research objective was to provide an insight in the status of Romanian public internal audit by identifying its strong points and weaknesses and suggesting a set of measures aiming at improve the public internal audit and willing to help in the implementation of a strong public internal audit function. The author’s investigation has scientific and practical implications aiming at attenuate the gap in the previous research, enriching the literature on the topic and suggesting ways of improvement of the public internal audit function in Romania.

Among the factors affecting the quality of internal auditing in banks are the auditors’ competence, objectivity and performance. In order to verify this assertion, the authors have reviewed the relationship between the internal auditor's competence, objectivity and performance and the quality of internal audit in the commercial banks of Kosovo. To reach the research objectives and test the hypotheses, a questionnaire was compiled, which was sent to internal auditors of all Commercial Banks of Kosovo. The results of this research provide evidence that the internal auditors in Kosovo's commercial banks consider the objectivity, competence and performance as major factors that affect the quality of the internal audit (IA) function. Based on these papers results the authors recommend that Kosovo's commercial banks should ensure the availability of main resources to achieve a better functioning of the internal audit department and its function.

The liability of the financial auditor has to be treated distinctively based on his relationship with the audited entity: internal auditor or external auditor. The logic behind this aspect results from the fact that, based on its relationship with the audited company, the liability has its source either in the Labour law, in what concerns the internal auditor, or it is a contractual liability, in case of the external auditor, even in the situation when this engages in internal auditing work through a contract. In both cases, the sanctions applied by the professional bodies to which they belong are applicable. The liability of the financial auditor is distinguished in categories as disciplinary, administrative, civil and criminal, the auditors having at their disposal methods to limit the liability, methods that will be displayed in the paper. This paper is concerned with the liabilities that the financial auditors can have, distinguished based on whether they are internal or external to the audited company, using in the analysis of the topic the method of deduction and induction, starting from the content analysis of the legislation and regulations in force. The role of this article is not only to present the situations which can attract the liability of the financial auditors and the types of liabilities, but also to support them with a presentation of and methods for limiting the liability, determined with the help of an analysis of these liabilities, and to protect them from a professional point of view.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of the auditors ‘role in validating the appropriate application of the International Financial Reporting Standards as a result of numerous changes and the complex situations from day to day, from the perspective of choosing the right method, respectively from the perspective of verifying compliance with these standards. The harmonization of the provided information facilitates the comparison in time and between companies, ensuring consistency a more granular discipline in reflecting the economic transactions. The aim is to achieve the harmonization of the accounting methods and principles by adopting the same set of Accounting Standards. Having the normalization process as a starting point, the harmonization can be achieved through a convergence process built by gathering all the useful and constructive information from the past experiences. The main objectives are to use the same language and to quantify the impact of change using the same set of tools. The distinctive element relates to the culture of each organization, but the way in which the financial statements are prepared and the way in which they are presented will remain the same if the full harmonization is achieved. Most of the time, the auditor has to assess the impact of an accounting selection at the expense of another option and to decide whether the results obtained, respectively the information provided by the entity are accurate and do not include misstatements that could significantly affect the financial statements. The selection process involves evaluating the results compared to the objectives set by the regulatory system. The role of the auditor is to assess the degree of compliance of the financial statements with an applicable financial reporting framework. The auditor's objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance that the financial statements taken as a whole are free from material misstatements which may be caused by error or fraud and to issue an audit report that includes the audit opinion. The auditor’s integrity and objectivity are directly related to the freedom from any constraint, which could affect the expression of the audit opinion. In other words, the auditor should never be affected by the influences that might compromise the professional judgment. The speed of the changes from accounting may compromise the way in which the professional judgment is applied due to the complexity of certain cases. The International Auditing Standards provide the following guideline: when the auditor is no longer in a position to evaluate a case, a specialist/ expert may be contracted. The loss of independence occurs when the auditor is influenced by the client to overlook certain deviations from the provisions of the International Financial Reporting Standards. The evolution of the accounting standards directly impacts the auditor's activity, as it is also shown in the study presented below. The results obtained can be extrapolated as the study focuses on a research related to the quantification of the impact of regulatory developments on the auditor's work.

The integrity and credibility of financial statements are sensitive aspects that significantly influence the investors’ confidence in the capital market efficiency. Recent research in the area of (re)establishing effective communication between the auditor and the investors have brought into the attention of audit practitioners the provisions of International Standard on Auditing (ISA) 701 “Communicating Key Audit Matters in the Independent Auditor’s Report.” This approach proves that investors demand more information that accompanies the audit opinion, when forming a decision to buy, hold or sell equity instruments. Our research is focused on identifying, isolating and analyzing the significant changes in financial asset trading prices, as a consequence of publishing the auditor report. Thus, the overall objective is to assess the impact of the modified opinion, expressed by the auditor in accordance with ISA 705 “Modifications to the Opinion in the Independent Auditor’s Report”, upon the prices of financial assets. Subsequently, the specific objectives aim to identify quantifiable adjustments in the financial position of the entities and to analyze its impact on trading prices. Research is focused on a sample that consists of 32 listed entities, of which 25 entities are included in the BET-XT index and seven entities are traded on the alternative trading system AeRO, selected in relation to the liquidity degree measured by the BVB market operator. Our observations upon changes in financial asset prices were focused on 2009-2017 period, while the analized audit reports addressed the reporting periods from 2008 to 2016, included.

The importance of financial literacy has increased due to factors such as the development of new financial products, the complexity of instruments and financial markets, political changes, and economic factors. For this reason, considerable measures have been performed recently by people and organizations with scientific competencies such as the World Bank, in respect of introducing, evaluating, and improving the people's financial literacy. Due to the importance of this concept, this research has been performed with the goal of evaluating the role of the financial literacy training in the participation ratio of small and medium-size enterprises in financial markets. The statistical population of this research is composed of small and medium-size companies activating in the industrial city of Rasht. For the data analysis, the Structural Equation Modelling was used, by the PLS method. The results show that the financial literacy training has a positive and significant impact on the financial literacy level, and also on the market participation.

Integrated reporting is a practice which seeks to communicate an organization’s value through a holistic picture integrating both financial and non-financial information. This process is in its incipient phase, with many companies unsure of how prepare a truly integrated report. With the aim of providing a better understanding on integrated reporting and its benefits, a common framework, was developed by The International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC). The main objective of this paper is to assess the compliance level of the integrated reports published for 2015 by the European companies which have adopted the initiative, with the IIRC Framework suggestions regarding its Guiding Principles. This research was carried out by using a content analysis and scoring based methodology. The results reveal that the companies are in different stages regarding the conformity with the IIRC requirements. Moreover, some companies analyzed in this study are in the vanguard of the initiative whereas others produce “combined” rather than “integrated” reports. This research contributes to relevant literature by analyzing the post IIRC Framework publication period, as it studies integrated or annual reports published for the 2015 fiscal year.