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The article aims to determine the implementation extent of the regulations around appointment and characteristics of audit committees and regulations concerning disclosure of information about the audit committee in Polish practice.

The author analyzed the informative content of management reports and corporate governance statements. The survey covered all domestic companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in the years from 2017 to 2021.

The new guidelines resulting from hard law had a significant impact on the corporate governance on the Polish capital market. According to the research results, over the analyzed years, the share of companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, which appointed an audit committee within the supervisory board, clearly increased. Moreover, the research found that in the period under study, not all companies fulfilled the obligation to disclose information about the audit committee resulting from hard law. In particular, this applies to disclosures on how the members of the audit committee acquired competencies in the area of accounting.

The article concerns the operation of the audit committee in public companies listed on the Polish capital market. The study can serve as a reference point for further research on corporate governance. The results of the research may be an indication for those who create legal solutions in the area of corporate governance.

This is the first such comprehensive study on the characteristics of the audit committee and disclosures about the audit committee resulting from the introduction of hard law in this area.

The purpose of this study is to analyse whether several indicators of audit committee quality are associated with a number of supply and demand factors such as board composition, board activity, auditor type and leverage.

The 2001 annual reports of a random sample of 200 Australian listed companies were analysed and data gathered on several audit committee quality indicators, i.e. independence, expertise, size and activity. Regression analysis was performed to determine the level of association between these indicators and several board and other variables.

The results indicate that, in 2001, many Australian listed companies were already complying with several of the ASX Corporate Governance Council's recommendations relating to audit committees. Furthermore, in a time period absent of audit committee regulation, there was strong support for the influence of the board of directors on the composition and activity of the audit committee.

Consistent with prior research, this study confirms the influence of the board of directors on a number of audit committee quality indicators.

Corporate regulators and companies will find these results useful to understand the factors driving several of the main indicators of audit committee quality.

This study adds to the current limited empirical research on Australian audit committees by analysing several indicators of audit committee quality in a time period not affected by regulation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the internal control disclosure (ICDISC) practices in South Asia and compare those disclosure practices across enforced setting (India) versus comply or explain setting (Pakistan and Bangladesh). Further, whether the audit firm size moderates the relationship between ICDISC practices and board & audit committee effectiveness.

To achieve these objectives, a sample of 100 non-financial companies was selected from Pakistan and India for three years’ period (2013-2015), whereas 93 companies were selected from Bangladesh based on market capitalization. The ICDISC index has been used which is based on the COSO framework.

Results of univariate analysis show that public sector companies in South Asia tend to disclose significantly more internal control information as compared to private sector companies. In terms of enforcement variable, the results of Mann–Whitney test show that companies listed in enforced setting have disclosed significantly greater extent of overall as well as individual categories of ICDISC as compared to companies listed in comply or explain setting. Based on multivariate analysis results for overall sample, it was found that board and audit committee characteristics and ownership by government have positive significant effect on ICDISC except representation of female or foreigner on audit committee which was found negatively significant. In addition to this, listing on foreign stock exchange and enforcement effect emerged as significant variables to influence ICDISC. Finally, the results of additional analysis state that the role of board and audit committee for influencing ICDISC has been moderated by the external auditor size in South Asia. In addition, enforcement variable is highly positively significant for companies having non-big four audit firm.

These results imply that enforcement variable acts as an important alternative external control mechanism when companies do not have big four audit firm as their external auditors.

This is very first study on ICDISC in South Asia which explores the effect of enforcement and governance on ICDISC practices of firms. It also contributes toward the literature that the regulation on reporting of internal control can be effective in developing country only if there is strong penalty for non-compliance by regulatory authorities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between audit committee effectiveness and timeliness of reporting. Specifically, the paper investigates whether there is any relationship between effectiveness of an audit committee and submission of audited financial statements to the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX).

Audit committee effectiveness is measured by an index based on the framework developed by DeZoort et al. Timeliness of reporting is defined as the number of days that elapses between a company's financial year‐end and the day on which its audited financial statement is received by the IDX. The sample comprises 211 non‐financial Indonesian listed companies. Multivariate regression analysis was performed to analyse the relationship between audit committee effectiveness and timeliness of reporting.

The findings show that timeliness of reporting is associated with audit committee effectiveness. This result suggests that audit committee effectiveness is likely to reduce the financial reporting lead time, i.e. the time taken by companies to publicly release audited financial statements to the stock exchange.

The audit committee effectiveness index employed in this study was based on DeZoort et al.'s framework. There could be other aspects of audit committee effectiveness such as the organizational context or multiple‐directorship which had not been addressed in the present study. Thus, future research may consider and examine these other aspects in developing a more comprehensive index.

The findings suggest that audit committee effectiveness is a significant factor ensuring timely submission of audited financial statements. Thus, companies perhaps can re‐look into how to further improve audit committee effectiveness in order to enhance timeliness of financial reporting.

Unlike the majority of prior studies which investigated the association between the presence/absence of audit committee and timeliness of reporting, this study is one of few which examined the relationship between effectiveness of audit committee and timeliness of reporting in an emerging country.

This paper aims to investigate how the roles, characteristics, expectations and evaluation practices of audit committees have adapted to regulatory change and what practices are most conducive to effective audit committees.

This paper uses semi-structured interviews with audit committee chairs and chief audit executives.

While new regulation is a primary driver of changes in the roles of audit committees, the audit committee’s role has evolved beyond regulatory requirements. Audit committees are taking a more active role in organisational governance and performance in key areas such as risk management. However, while audit committees have a clear concept of what characteristics committee members require, conceptual frameworks and mechanisms for evaluating the performance of committees and their members remain underdeveloped.

The responses of audit committees in Australia to broader regulatory trends suggest that more research is required into how audit committees function in practice, and into developing new frameworks for evaluating the committees’ performance. This paper provides an in-depth exploration of key areas of audit committee performance, and identifies aspects that might be further investigated.

The paper identifies key attributes of effective audit committees and especially the characteristics of audit committee members. The paper also identifies a need to improve – and in many cases create – performance evaluation frameworks and mechanisms. Given the international regulatory trend towards greater reliance on audit committees to improve governance, more policy attention is required on developing guidelines and assessment processes that evaluate whether audit committees are fulfilling their legislative mandate in practice.

The paper contributes to the relatively new and more specific discussion on reviewing and evaluating the performance of the board and its subcommittees.

This study aims to examine the effect of the audit committee characteristics on forward-looking disclosure.

The characteristics of audit committee that examined are audit committee expertise, audit committee meeting frequency and audit committee size. To measure the extent of forward-looking disclosure, this study did content analysis using a checklist of 22 forward-looking items. The samples of this research are 285 non-financial firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in the year 2015. Ordinary least square regression is used for hypotheses testing.

The results of this study show that the audit committee accounting expertise, audit committee financial expertise, the frequency of audit committee meetings and the size of the audit committee have a significant positive effect on the forward-looking disclosure.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study examining the audit committee characteristics on forward-looking disclosure in the context of Indonesia, one of the emerging markets.

Gives examples of a number of organizations, committees, and commissions which have promoted both internal auditing and audit committees during the past two decades. Explores the need for a close working relationship between the internal auditor and the audit committee. Examines: (1) the evolution of both internal auditing and audit committees; (2) the Treadway Commission recommendations regarding the importance and role of audit committees and internal auditors; (3) ways in which internal auditors can work with audit committees; and (4) benefits gained from this relationship. Shows how, recently, internal auditors have been transformed from a financial enforcer to a respected member of the management decision‐making process, and audit committees have also assumed more oversight responsibilities in the areas of financial reporting and internal control. Thus, a close and effective working relationship between the audit committee and the internal auditor will be beneficial not only to the company which they serve but also to society as a whole.

Audit committees have increasingly been recognised as an integral part of modern control structures and governance practices in both the private sector and public service. The audit committee is an integral element of public accountability and governance processes. It plays a key role in underwriting the integrity of corporate governance of a government department. The broad aim of this study is to investigate the status and function of audit committees in South African national government departments. The research question investigated in this paper is to determine whether audit committees in the public service are perceived to be effective in assisting accounting officers of government departments to discharge their responsibilities. The study concludes that the majority of audit committees in the South African public service are not perceived as ineffective in the performance of the required functions of committees. Audit committees can still improve their effectiveness in their performance of certain key functions in the areas of oversight over risk management, governance, financial reporting, internal control and support for the external audit function.

We investigate the association between attributes of the audit committee of a firm and the likelihood of negative events occurring in the firm’s life in Israel. The mandate of the audit committee in Israel is substantially different from its mandate in the US. The responsibilities of the committee in the US are divided between two committees in Israel, one of which deals with reviewing the financial statements and the other one, titled “audit committee,” is in charge of the remaining tasks of the US-type audit committee. This allows us a unique opportunity to focus on the roles of the audit committee other than reviewing the financial statements. Using hand-collected data on firms traded on Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 2010–2014, we find that the larger the audit committee size, the larger the likelihood of negative events, consistent with the cumbersome workings and potential conflicts of interests characterizing a large committee. The percentage of directors with accounting and financial expertise on the audit committee is associated with a lower likelihood of negative events, in line with the value of such experts in tasks beyond reviewing the financial statements. The fraction of independent directors on the audit committee is not found to be significantly related to the likelihood of negative events. This is consistent with the notion that some independent directors are independent in form but not necessarily in substance, which is surprising in light of the comprehensive regulation regarding audit committee independence imposed by the Israeli regulator.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between audit committee expertise and asymmetric information in the US equity market.

The authors use measures of information asymmetry for 705 US firms (5,260 firm-year observations) over the period from 2007 to 2018, and use the theory of expertise (Ericsson and Smith, 1991) to examine the association between audit committee financial expertise and information asymmetry. The authors use multiple econometric approaches such as firm fixed-effect regression and two-stage ordinary least squares regression to control for possible endogeneity and reverse causality and find that the results remain the same.

The authors find that the existence of an audit committee with financial expertise is negatively and significantly associated with information asymmetry. The authors further provide empirical evidence through which audit committee financial expertise affects the firm’s informational environment. Additional analysis supports the argument that the audit committee’s financial expertise enhances the firm’s informational environment by increasing (decreasing) analyst following (dispersion).

One limitation to consider, like most studies on audit committees, is that the authors do not examine the actual role performed by the audit committee. The authors focus on the characteristics stipulated by the Sarbanes–Oxley Act 2002 and stock exchange rules regarding the financial expertise of audit committee members only.

This study is useful to policy makers, standard setters, investors, activists, managers, lenders and various stakeholders who rely on the financial statements of firms with an expert audit committee on board. The outcome of this study promotes recruiting audit committees with financial expertise due to the assumed benefits of this trait to the US firm.

The results of this study are not event-dependent and therefore have persistent effects, which is important to the evaluation of the usefulness of a regulation. This study promotes recruiting audit committees with financial expertise on boards because of the assumed benefits to the firm and investors.

This study is the first to document that financial expertise of audit committee characteristics is not only negatively related to the magnitude of information asymmetry but also driven by the financial expertise of audit committee members rather than chairs.