The accounting expertise of chief financial officer (CFO) is closely related to some important factors, financial reporting quality, auditor selection, accounting policy selection, and the transparency of financial reporting, affecting corporate credit ratings. Therefore, whether a CFO with accounting expertise may also a factor affects corporate credit ratings. We examine the effect of CFO's accounting expertise on corporate credit ratings by manually collecting CFOs’ autobiographic information and identifying the accounting expertise of CFOs. We find that corporate CFOs with accounting expertise is positively associated with corporate credit ratings. Further, CFOs with accounting expertise have the incremental effect on corporate credit ratings after controlling for corporate financial reporting quality. Finally, the effects of CFOs with accounting expertise on corporate credit ratings are more pronounced for firms with high default risk. The results of this paper provide the empirical evidence about the effects of CFOs' accounting expertise on corporate credit ratings.
Relation:
2018 Taiwan Accounting Association Annual Conference & Asian Accounting Associations Conference
