The D'Amore-McKim School of Business Accounting group is pleased to welcome Summer (Xia) Xiao as an assistant professor. Xiao recently completed her Ph.D. in Accounting from the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, where she also taught an introductory accounting course.
Xiao's research focuses on how an auditor's initial public offering (IPO) expertise can add value to companies going through IPO registrations. In the U.S., every IPO registration is reviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC issues comments on the IPO prospectus, and the company needs to address them before it can launch the IPO.
Xiao documents that, in addition to issuing the audit report, the auditor also assists with the SEC review process. She finds that if the auditor has higher IPO expertise, the company is able to complete the review process more efficiently and, in turn, avoid IPO delays.
“I was drawn to Northeastern University in part because my interest in auditing research aligns well with that of other faculty in the department,” says Xiao. “I am also interested in Northeastern's culture of global experience—as an undergraduate in Hong Kong, I came to the U.S. for a semester and had a wonderful experience as a foreign exchange student.”
Xiao received her Bachelor of Business Administration from Lingnan University, after which she spent several years working as an auditor in KPMG's Hong Kong office. She then received her Master of Accountancy from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.
She has been a presenter, reviewer, discussant, and moderator at a number of conferences held by the American Accounting Association. This summer, she went back to Hong Kong and presented a paper at the MIT Asia Conference in Accounting.