Investors are about to get their hands on more information from the auditors of public companies than they’ve previously seen.
Annual financial statements released after June 30, 2019, will feature an expanded audit report, written just for them. The idea is to give investors more information about a company’s most complex financial accounting and steps the auditors took to validate them.
The introduction of the CAM—critical audit matters—will usher in a new era for the auditor’s report, long a boilerplate statement buried deep within the financial report. The audit report has changed little since the 1940s, when the report was ...