We study the impact of appointing women as audit partners from a credit rating agency perspective. We investigate whether credit rating agencies value the appointment of women to audit partner positions differently than when men are appointed. This study uses a United Kingdom (UK) balanced panel data of 2472 firm-year observations of public quoted companies from 2009 to 2016 and analyzes how credit rating agencies respond to such appointments. We find a more positive credit score reaction after appointment of a female audit partner than that following the appointment of a male audit partner. 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 partners.

我们从信用评级机构的角度研究任命女性担任审计合伙人的影响。我们调查信用评级机构对任命女性审计合伙人职位的重视程度是否与任命男性不同。本研究使用英国 (UK) 2009 年至 2016 年对上市公司的 2472 个公司年度观察的平衡面板数据，并分析信用评级机构如何回应此类任命。我们发现，与任命男性审计合伙人相比，任命女性审计合伙人后信用评分反应更积极。这一发现表明，从信用评级机构的角度来看，在任命审计合伙人时似乎存在针对特定性别的商业案例。