Title: Corporate governance and audit committee

Authors: Laura Salloum; Charbel Salloum; Hager Jarrar; Mario Sassine; Elias Gebrayel; Nathalie Chaanine

Addresses: Bart & Jones Publishers, Toulouse, France ' USEK School of Business, Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, Juniyah, Lebanon ' USEK School of Business, Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, Juniyah, Lebanon ' USEK School of Business, Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, Juniyah, Lebanon ' Al Taher Group, Chatee Al Qurum, Muscat, Sultunate of Oman ' Deloitte & Touche, Beirut, Lebanon

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between audit committees, compensation plans and corporate audit fees in Lebanon by using the data of 110 family firms. A panel data was used to test our hypothesis, and the result of panel regression shows that audit committee's attributes such as size, independence, meeting frequency and expertise, and compensation plans positively affect corporate audit fees. This result comes in consistency with the fact that the audit committee members' expertise also affects the fees charged by auditors to the company under audit. In addition, both long- and short-term compensation plans affect the fees paid by the auditee to the external auditing firm.

Keywords: audit committees; compensation plans; audit fees; corporate governance; auditing; Lebanon; committe size; committe independence; meeting frequency; committe expertise.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMFA.2015.074900

International Journal of Managerial and Financial Accounting, 2015 Vol.7 No.3/4, pp.198 - 216

Received: 24 Jul 2015
Accepted: 30 Dec 2015
Published online: 23 Feb 2016 *

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