Financial information that meets the user’s requirements must be accurate, sufficient, timely and reliable. Consequently, national laws and international auditing standards require the auditor to provide confidence in the audited financial information. To achieve this, the auditor independence must be ensured. The objective of this study is to identify factors affecting the auditor independence in financial statements audit in Vietnam. The identified factors are audit tenure; the provision of non-audit services; economic dependence; employment with audit clients; competition within the external audit market; the risk to the auditor from the provision of poor-quality audit services, and the disclosure of financial relations. Data of the study were collected through a survey of auditor, audit firms and users of financial statements such as managers, investors, accountants, etc. The findings are the basis for proposing recommendations to more enhance the auditor independence and audit quality in financial statements in VietNam.

This research is conducted to investigate determinants that affect delays in the signing of audit reports in Vietnam. The audit delay is measured as a function of the number of days that elapse from the accounting period until the date when the audit report is signed. This study employs a sample of 142 foreign direct investment (FDI) firms in Vietnam in 2019. We use Linear regression analysis, modelling audit delay as a function of the following explanatory variables: firm size, audit firm type, sign of income, audit opinion, and leverage. The findings indicate that the firms that report net income, that have standard audit opinion, and that have bigger size release their audited financial statements earlier. Variables such as auditor firm and leverage show no significant relationship with audit delay.