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The importance of audits of banks with respect to the Czech national economy within years 1993 – 2014
Rott, Michal ; Zamrazilová, Eva (advisor) ; Štěpánek, Pavel (referee)
The aim of this master thesis is to evaluate the importance of audits of banks with respect to the Czech national economy within years 1993 - 2014. The primary purpose of this study is to determine the value of both external and internal audits as well as of internal control systems and of bank supervision in order to maintain a long-term stability of banks on the Czech financial market. In the light of knowledge gathered from the Czech banking crisis (late nineties of the 20th century) and from the latest widely-spread economic and financial crisis (2008), it has been proved that low-quality audits may consequently contagiously affect a great deal of financial institutions. As for the economies, a collapse of a larger number of banks in the short run may cause higher social costs (mainly due to government budget deficit when bailing out affected banks and to economic downturn). Analyses suggest that these crises have been a result of a confluence of many factors. In particular, a poor a management of banks and its interest in short-term profit-maximizing goals, trades with highly risky financial instruments (especially in the US and in the EU), likewise failures of both auditors and bank supervisors, account for some of the main factors. Moreover, it has been concluded that an institutional background (a weak law system in the Czech Republic) played an important role, too. The quality of audits was also influenced by an everlasting conflict of interest of statutory auditors who have been paid by the audited banks. This probably resulted in an unethical behavior of auditors. Furthermore, auditors were lacking the state-of-the-art knowledge in terms of rapidly developing financial instruments. As a matter of fact, auditors did not address all the risks the banks were facing to the stakeholders. This study indicates that both external and internal audits along with a bank supervision are important, nonetheless, not sufficient conditions assuring a long-term stability on financial markets.
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