Empirical study on industry client's importance and Audit independence

This paper use possibility of strict audit opinion issued for the client to measure Audit independence, inspected relationship between consolidation client's importance and Audit independence in 1 year before and after the accounting firm merger, Visiting accounting firms merge and client's importance does have a significant impact on auditor independence under the merge. The empirical results show that the accounting firm merger before and after 1 year, as the industry client's importance reduced, the auditor will more inclined to issued strict audit opinion. It suggests that there was a significant negative correlation between industry client's importance with the Audit independence during before and after the merger period.