Reform or rebirth ? The 1966 Companies Act and the problem of the modernisation of the audit profession in France

Carlos Ramirez
Additional contact information
Carlos Ramirez: GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper revisits an episode in the history of the auditing profession in France: the period that saw the 'professionalisation' of auditing in the late 1960s, almost 100 years after enactment of the law that had officially created the activity. Despite the existence of practitioners with a reputation for competency and despite the more stringent conditions imposed on the recruitment of these practitioners during the 1930s, certification of accounts had remained a 'function' rather than a profession. The reform of France's commercial code in 1966 thus gave auditors a second chance, making them a key component in an ambitious plan to modernise French financial markets. The paper considers this reform from the angle of the problem facing the reformers, that of 'professionalising the profession' of auditor. Two aspects of the problems are discussed. The first concerns the need to take into consideration the existence of another profession, the profession of the French chartered accountant (expert-comptable), which in the opinion of its leaders had a legitimate claim to a monopoly on auditing. The second concerns the fate reserved for pre-reform audit practitioners (comissaires de socits), not all of whom would be admitted as members of the new auditing profession.

Keywords: audit; professionalisation; France (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Accounting Business and Financial History, 2009, Vol.19,nº2, pp.127-148. ⟨10.1080/09585200902969252⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00491672

DOI: 10.1080/09585200902969252

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().