The Impacts of the Establishment and Quality of Audit Committee on the Disclosure of Key Audit Matters
Author
Abstract
To enhance the transparency and information value of audit reports, the statement of Auditing Standard No. 57 requires auditors of listed companies to include a key audit matter section (Key Audit Matters, KAM) to communicate the most important or most challenging matters of the current year’s audit. In addition to professional judgments, audit committees who discussed the audit reports with their auditors, play an important role in the disclosure of KAM. The current study explores the impacts of establishing audit committees and their quality on the disclosure of key audit matters for listed companies in 2016 and 2017. The results show that compared with the supervisory mechanism, KAM of companies with audit committees included more detailed descriptions. Further, the quality of the audit committee, especially the diligence and the academic background of its members, significantly impacted the KAM disclosure.
Key Words
audit committee, key audit matters, statements of auditing standards no.58
