Questionnaire on effects of mandatory audit firm rotation in the Netherlands

This questionnaire was used for research by prof. dr. B.J. de Jong, prof. dr. J.B.S. Hijink and L. in ‘t Veld MSc LLM of the Radboud University Nijmegen on the effects of mandatory audit firm rotation for listed companies in the Netherlands. It accompanies the paper ‘Mandatory audit firm rotation for listed companies: the effects in the Netherlands’ and the report ‘De effecten van (verplichte) roulatie van accountantskantoor in de Nederlandse praktijk’.The questionnaire was distributed to relevant stakeholders in September and October 2017. Among these stakeholders were (with the number of respondents in brackets): regulators and supervisors (8); auditors, authorized to perform statutory audits at public interest entities (PIEs, 73); auditors, not authorized to perform statutory audits at PIEs (24); audited companies or institutions, which are PIEs (22); audited companies or institutions, not being PIEs (21); and users of annual accounts, including interest groups such as the Dutch investor association (VEB) and its members and Eumedion, which represents institutional investors (64).The questionnaire could be filled in anonymously, so that stakeholders could feel free to answer truthfully. The questionnaire contains 25 questions relating to the maximum duration for statutory audit engagements, the requirements on the cooling-off period and aspects of the regular and mandatory (re)tenders as included in the Audit Regulation.A total of 278 respondents answered one or more questions. 171 respondents fully completed the survey (62% of the 278).A file with responses to the questions is available upon request via prof. dr. B.J. de Jong ([e-mail]) or prof. dr. J.B.S. Hijink ([e-mail]).