The Effect of Audit Committee Expertise, Independence, and Activity on Aggressive Earnings Management

2004 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Be´dard ◽  
Sonda Marrakchi Chtourou ◽  
Lucie Courteau
Keyword(s):  
Earnings Management ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
Financial Information ◽  
Corporate Earnings ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Abnormal Accruals ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Asymmetric Loss Function

This study investigates whether the expertise, independence, and activities of a firm's audit committee have an effect on the quality of its publicly released financial information. In particular, we examine the relationship between audit committee characteristics and the extent of corporate earnings management as measured by the level of income-increasing and income-decreasing abnormal accruals. Using two groups of U.S. firms, one with relatively high and one with relatively low levels of abnormal accruals in the year 1996, we find a significant association between earnings management and audit committee governance practices. We find that aggressive earnings management is negatively associated with the financial and governance expertise of audit committee members, with indicators of independence, and with the presence of a clear mandate defining the responsibilities of the committee. The association is similar for both income-increasing and income-decreasing earnings management, suggesting that audit committee members are concerned with both types of earnings management and do not exhibit an asymmetric loss function similar to that of auditors.

scholarly journals The effect of board and audit committee independence on earnings management in Spain

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 372-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Fernandez Fernández Méndez ◽  
Ruben Arrondo Garcha
Keyword(s):  
Earnings Management ◽  
Agency Theory ◽  
Ownership Structure ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
Financial Statements ◽  
Managerial Incentives ◽  
Financial Leverage ◽  
Corporate Earnings ◽  
Abnormal Accruals

This paper investigates the role played by the board and the audit committee as a mean to improve the quality of financial statements’ information in Spanish firms. We use abnormal accruals as a measure of earnings management and therefore as a proxy of the quality of financial statements. Additionally, we analyse from an agency theory perspective whether the ownership structure affects the managerial incentives to manipulate the firms’ results. Results show that the board and audit committee independence mitigates accounting manipulation practices. However, we find no evidence that the ownership structure affects the extent of corporate earnings management. We have also found that financial leverage is an incentive for the managers to manipulate accounting figures. Our findings are in line with the Spanish authorities’ recommendations to foment the formation of independent mechanisms of control.

scholarly journals Ownership Structure and earnings management: Empirical evidence from listed pharmaceuticals and chemical firms of Bangladesh

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-69
Author(s):  
Dewan Azmal Hossain
Keyword(s):  
Earnings Management ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Ownership Structure ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Foreign Ownership ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Financial Information ◽  
Least Square ◽  
The Relationship

Objective – This study aims to examine the relationship between ownership structure (determined by institutional and foreign ownership) and earnings management in the context of Bangladeshi Pharmaceuticals and Chemical firms. Methodology/Technique – Out of 32 listed firms, this study examined 29 firms from the pharmaceuticals and chemical industry of Bangladesh from 2014 to 2018. Three firms are omitted as they got listed in 2018 and 2019 respectively. This study uses discretionary working capital accrual to measure earnings management that is the dependent variable. Ordinary least square regression analysis is conducted to assess the result of this study. Institutional and foreign ownership are independent variables. ROA, size, cash flow from operation, and leverage are control variables. Findings – It is found that institutional ownership is negatively related to earnings management and foreign ownership is positively related to earnings management but none of them are statistically significant indicating institutional and foreign ownership do not help in resolving or reducing the earnings management problems in the context of Bangladeshi pharmaceuticals and chemical firms. Novelty – Previous studies in Bangladesh deal only with the techniques of earnings management. To my knowledge, it is the first study that tries to assess the relationship of ownership structure defined by institutional and foreign shareholdings with earnings management in the context of Bangladeshi pharmaceuticals and chemical firms. These two ownership patterns are selected because they are supposed to increase the quality of financial information and also because in Bangladesh state and general shareholders are too dispersed to monitor the governance issues. The practical implications of this study is that investors should not consider institutional and foreign ownership percentage as a determining factor of good governance when considering investment decisions rather should look for other firm-specific factors as institutional and foreign shareholders are found to be inactive in increasing the quality of financial information in the context of Bangladesh. Policymakers should identify why institutional and foreign shareholders are not active and should revise the governance mechanisms accordingly. Type of Paper: Empirical Keywords: Ownership structure; Institutional Shareholdings; Foreign Shareholdings; Earnings Management; Bangladesh. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Hossain, D.A. 2020. Ownership Structure and earnings management: Empirical evidence from listed pharmaceuticals and chemical firms of Bangladesh, J. Fin. Bank. Review, 5 (2): 58 – 69 https://doi.org/10.35609/jfbr.2020.5.2(3) JEL Classification: G40; G41; G49.

scholarly journals An Investigation IFRS Adoption in Malaysia on The Relationship between The Audit Committee and Quality of Financial Statement

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-122
Author(s):  
Citrawati Jatiningrum ◽  
Fauzi Fauzi ◽  
Rita Irviani ◽  
Mujiyati Mujiyati ◽  
Shahanif Hasan
Keyword(s):  
Earnings Management ◽  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
Financial Statement ◽  
Committee Meeting ◽  
Ifrs Adoption ◽  
Financial Expertise ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Post Period

Audit committees are one of Corporate Governance (CG) mechanisms which are the significant factor in improving its role in inhibiting financial statement fraud (Choi, Jeon & Park, 2004; Habbash, 2010; Soliman & Ragab, 2014). Quality of the Financial Statement emphasised as being in compliance with accounting standards accepted in general, the disclosure scale, and reported numbers although this is not merely a task for the IFRS (Cascino & Gassen, 2010). In recent years, the issue of IFRS adoption in developed and developing countries have been a great deal of attention from many researchers. However, regarding the relationship between the Audit Committee and Quality of Financial Statement with IFRS requirements is still questioning. In fact, the results obtained from some previous researches are inconsistent. Therefore, the objectives in this study are aims to investigate whether post the mandatory IFRS adoption in Malaysia would limit earnings management practice in highlights of governance monitoring on the quality of financial reporting in this environment. This paper gives some evidence: 1) The effect of pre- and post IFRS adoption in Malaysia in the relationship between the Audit Committee and earnings management adoption. 2) examine the differences of the level earnings management on two periods of IFRS adoption in Malaysia. Quality of Financial statement in this study was measured by the level of earnings management with discretional accrual (DA) proxy. The audit committee variable measured by Audit Committee Independence (ACIND), Audit Committee Financial Expertise (ACFEX), Audit Committee Meeting (ACMEET), Audit Committee Size (ACSIZE) and control variable in this study using Board Size (BRDSIZE) and Firm Leverage (FRMLEV). The sample of this study including the two main time periods, there are pre-IFRS adoption and post-IFRS adoption. Using 81 listed companies in Malaysia as a sample, with 567 observations is analysed from 2009 to 2015 (7 years observations) with purposive judgement sampling selection. For seven years, a total of 567 observations is analysed. The pre- IFRS adoption period was tested from 2009 through 2011, and the post-IFRS adoption was tested from 2012 through the end of 2015. The findings in this study with multiplied regression analysis revealed that the hypothesis test in a period of pre- and post IFRS adoption ACFEX and FIRMLEV statistically were significance at 5% level. It means that Audit Committee Financial Expertise (ACFEX) have a significant effect on earnings management practise. According to the result found in the post IFRS adoption period, Audit Committee Meeting (ACMEET) is significant. It means that the frequency of audit committee meetings could be decreasing the level of discretionary accrual. The evidence also unveils both of ACIND and ACSIZE at 5 % level p-value is not significant. The most important result finding on pre- and post period of IFRS adoption in Malaysia provide evidence that based on the statistically significant was upward or the relation more significantly. However, this study also reported with paired sampled test analysis there was no significant difference between the level of earnings management in pre- and post period the adoption of IFRS in Malaysia at 5% level significance.  An important contribution this study has the impact on practices and has implications useful for regulators. The study provides empirical evidence that a relationship between the audit committee and earnings management in the case of IFRS adoption. In contributing to the strength of governance quality and FRQ need to be revisited, especially after mandatory IFRS adoption. Though the audit committee and audit quality are implicitly mentioned in the CG act, it is recommended that formulates specific rules relating to the quality of Financial Reporting. In this regard, it is suggested that company reports would be presented high quality in financial reporting to provide appropriate responses to recommendations made in the reports. Finally, these findings suggest that CG practices in Malaysian that have its own peculiar characteristics compared to other emerging economies.      

scholarly journals An Examination of the Effects of Change in Committee Chair on Audit Quality

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Izhar Haq ◽  
Teresa Lang ◽  
Hongkang Xu
Keyword(s):  
Audit Committee ◽  
Audit Quality ◽  
Financial Statements ◽  
Discretionary Accruals ◽  
Committee Chair ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Predicted Values ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
A Company

This study uses GMI Ratings directorship data from 2008 to 2013 along with the associated financial data to examine the relationship between audit committee chair change with the absolute discretionary accruals in the financial statements of the reporting companies.  Our results suggest that audit committee chair change is positively associated with the absolute discretionary accruals.  Specifically, absolute discretionary accruals are significantly higher when there is a change in the audit committee chair.  These results are consistent with prior research that deviations from the predicted values of accruals is an indicator of “poor” audit quality.  An additional finding of this paper is that a person younger than 60 is more likely to be a new audit committee chair when there is a change and therefore will have less experience and contacts than the outgoing chair. An important implication of these results is that audit committee chair change can have a significant impact on the quality of the financial statements of a company as well as on the audit quality.

scholarly journals An Investigation on the Audit Committees Effectiveness: The Case for GLCs in Malaysia

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurul Nazlia Jamil ◽  
Sherliza Puat Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Earnings Management ◽  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
Reporting Quality ◽  
Audit Committees ◽  
Financial Reporting Quality ◽  
Financial Expertise ◽  
Monitoring Mechanism ◽  
The Impact

Financial reporting quality has been under scrutiny especially after the collapse of major companies. The main objective of this study is to investigate the audit committee’s effectiveness on the financial reporting quality among the Malaysian GLCs following the transformation program. In particular, the study examined the impact of audit committee characteristics (independence, size, frequency of meeting and financial expertise) on earnings management in periods prior to and following the transformation program (2003-2009). As of 31 December 2010, there were 33 public-listed companies categorized as Government-Linked Companies (GLC Transformation Policy, 2010) and there were 20 firms that have complete data that resulted in the total number of firm-year observations to 120 for six years (years 2003-2009).  Results show that the magnitude of earnings management as proxy of financial reporting quality is influenced by the audit committee independence. Agency theory was applied to explain audit committee, as a monitoring mechanism as well as reducing agency costs via gaining competitive advantage in knowledge, skills, and expertise towards financial reporting quality. The study is important as it provides additional knowledge about the impact of audit committees effectiveness on reducing the earnings management, and assist practitioners, policymakers and regulators such as Malaysian Institute of Accountants, Securities Commission and government to determine ways to enhance audit committees effectiveness and improve the financial reporting of GLCs, as well as improving the quality of the accounting profession.     

scholarly journals Do audit committee characteristics of Bahraini listed companies have an effect on the level of internet financial reporting?

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 131-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara AbdulHakeem Saleh AlMatrooshi ◽  
Abdalmuttaleb M. A. Musleh Al-Sartawi ◽  
Zakeya Sanad
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Listed Companies ◽  
Financial Information ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Regression Test ◽  
The Relationship

Corporate Governance and IFR are influential topics that need to be addressed nowadays due to its importance. Especially since companies are growing and extending globally. This research is conducted in Kingdom of Bahrain through the year 2014, where it investigates the relationship between Audit Committee characteristics as a tool of CG and IFR. Literature review has been conducted, not to mention Multi-regression test was used to evaluate the relationship between Audit Committee characteristics and IFR for Bahraini listed companies. The results have showed that the relationship between Audit Committee characteristics and IFR is negative, which indicates that the Audit committee characteristics have no influence over the disclosure of financial information over the internet. However, Frequency of meeting of the board and Big4 resulted in a positive relationship with internet financial reporting. The study ends with a main conclusion and recommendation that contain certain steps and advices of disclosing financial information in an appropriate way through the internet in order to improve the relationship between Audit committee characteristics and IFR.

scholarly journals The Influence of KAP Size, Institutional Ownership, and Audit Committee on The Quality of Financial Statements

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Adris Kuncoro ◽  
Dhini Suryandari
Keyword(s):  
Audit Committee ◽  
Stock Exchange ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Institutional Ownership ◽  
Financial Statements ◽  
Financial Reports ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Descriptive Statistical Analysis

This research aims to examine the relationship between KAP size, institutional ownership, and the audit committee on the quality of financial reports. 616 Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) companies in 2018 became the population in this study. Purposive sampling as a sampling technique resulted in 547companies. Using inferential logistic regression analysis and using descriptive statistical analysis hypothesis testing methods with IBM SPSS version 25 tools. This study found that the KAP size and the audit committee has a positive effect on the quality of financial reports. Institutional ownership does not affect the quality of financial reports. Simultaneously, KAP size, institutional ownership, and audit committee influence the quality of financial reports. This study concludes that partially, KAP size and audit committee has a positive effect on the quality of financial reports. Simultaneously, KAP size, institutional ownership, and audit committee affect the quality of financial reports. Further research suggests using other proxies, other periods, and other variables.

scholarly journals Related Party Transactions, Family Ownership, and Earnings Management in Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 688-700
Author(s):  
Levina Ulfa Subastian ◽  
Ari Kuncara Widagdo ◽  
Doddy Setiawan
Keyword(s):  
Earnings Management ◽  
Stock Exchange ◽  
Management Practice ◽  
Control Variable ◽  
Family Ownership ◽  
Related Party Transactions ◽  
Discretionary Accrual ◽  
Corporate Earnings ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Public Accountant

The purpose of earnings management practice is to reach the profit goals the company wants to achieve. Therefore, this study aims to determine the relationship between related party transactions and earnings management in Indonesia by balanced panel data from consumer goods companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) from 2017 to 2019. The number of samples used in this study was 102 firm-year observations. The results showed that related party transactions positively and significantly improved corporate earnings management, with discretionary accrual as a proxy. The presence of family ownership strengthens the relationship between related party transactions and earnings management. Also, it shows that the control variable: public accountant from BIG4, company size, company losses, and ROA affect accrual earnings management. The leverage does not affect accrual earnings management. The study result indicates that family business ownership encourages an entrenchment effect that is detrimental to the company. It is carried out through related party transactions then manipulated by using accrual earnings management practices.DOI: 10.26905/jkdp.v25i3.5778

Do corporate governance practices restrain earnings management in banking industry? Lessons from India

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Deepa Mangala ◽  
Neha Singla ◽  
Neha Singla
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Earnings Management ◽  
Board Of Directors ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
Least Square ◽  
Loan Loss ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
Indian Banks

Purpose This study aims to investigate the role of corporate governance practices in restraining earnings management in Indian commercial banks. Design/methodology/approach Estimation of earnings management is based on discretionary loan loss provision and discretionary realised security gains and losses using Beatty et al. (2002) model. The effect of corporate governance on earnings management is examined by performing two-way least square dummy variable regression. Data for a period of five years (2016–2020) is collected from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy ProwessIQ database, Reserve Bank of India website, annual report of banks, National Stock Exchange and bank’s website. Findings Regression results exhibit that number of board committees, size and independence of audit committee and joint audit are significantly effective in curbing earnings management. Other board-related variables (size, independence, meetings and diligence) and audit committee variables (meetings and diligence) are not effective in restraining earnings management in Indian banks. Practical implications The findings may prove to be helpful to regulators, board of directors and investors. It shows the weak area of corporate governance in India that is lack of autonomy to independent directors, which needs regulators attention and it also suggests that the number of independent auditors should be adequate for audit purposes. The board of directors must ensure the formulation of an adequate number of committees, which perform their own super specialised functions. This study brings an alarm to investors not to rely on reported earnings alone as they may be manipulated. Originality/value This paper substantiates the scant literature on the role of corporate governance practices in restraining earnings management in banks of emerging markets and to the best of the authors’ knowledge impact of joint audits on earnings management is previously unexplored in Indian banks, which are examined in this study.

Audit Committee Characteristics and Earnings Quality

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-49
Author(s):  
Fatima Albedal ◽  
Allam Mohammed Hamdan ◽  
Qasim Zureigat
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Audit Committee ◽  
Earnings Quality ◽  
Listed Companies ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Pooled Data ◽  
Data Regression ◽  
Code Of Corporate Governance ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter investigates the relationship between the audit committee and earnings quality of listed companies in Bahrain Bourse and to examine whether those companies comply with the obligatory code of corporate governance. The sample of this study includes 40 companies listed in Bahrain Bourse for the period 2013-2017. The model of the study tested the relationship between the independent variables of audit committee characteristics and the dependent variable of earnings quality using pooled data regression. The findings of the study showed that the Bahraini listed companies comply and follow the code of corporate governance and some audit committee characteristics have an impact on earnings quality.

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