DOES THE EXPERTISE OF THE AUDIT COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON MODERATE THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN AUDIT COMMITTEE ATTRIBUTES AND FIRM PERFORMANCE?

Abstract

The current research aims to examine how audit committee (AC) attributes affect firm performance in the finance sector. Its main goal is to determine if the audit committee chairperson‘s (ACC) experience has a moderating effect on the relationship between AC attributes and the financial firm‘s performance. The directors who have sufficient experience are valued as intellectual resources by the companies for which they make decisions (Beasley, 1996). In addition, Turley and Zaman (2007) found that the audit committee chairperson‘s individual power has a substantial effect on firm performance. This study used data from 44 financial sector companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange from 2015 to 2019, totalling 195 firm-year observations. The Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple linear regressions were employed. According to the study‘s results, AC independence has a significant impact on the performance of financial companies. However, the AC chairman‘s expertise (ACCEXP) had no moderating impact on the association between AC independence and firm performance. On the contrary, the findings indicate that ACCEXP has a significant moderating impact on the association between AC meetings, AC size and firm performance.