Credit Rating Agency Response to Appointment of Female Auditors : Evidence from the UK

We study the impact of appointing women at audit partner positions from a credit rating agency perspective. We investigate whether credit rating agency value the appointment of women to audit partner positions differently than they do for the appointment of men. This study uses a UK balanced panel data of 2,472 firm-year observations of public quoted companies from 2009 to 2016 and analyses how credit rating agencies respond to such appointments. We find a positive credit score reaction after appointment of a female auditor than that following the appointment of a male auditor. This finding suggests that, from a credit rating agency perspective, there seems to be a business case for a particular gender when it comes to appointing audit partner