The Impact of Audit Committees’ Meetings and Audit Fees on the Financial Performance of Listed Banks in Ghana

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume III, Issue V, May 2019 | ISSN 2454–6186

The Impact of Audit Committees’ Meetings and Audit Fees on the Financial Performance of Listed Banks in Ghana

Armstrong Ephraim Awinbugri¹, Gyimah Prince²

¹Assistant Lecturer, Kessben University College, Ghana.
²Assistant Lecturer, University of Education, Winneba-Kumasi, Ghana

Abstract:-The study adopted quantitative research approach and descriptive research method to assess the impact of Audit committee on financial performance of banks listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange. Audit committee variables used were: Audit Committee Meetings, Audit Committee Size, and Audit fees. Financial performance was examined using Return on Asset (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE). The researcher found that listed banks financial performance with respect to ROA was positively influenced by audit committee size and audit fees whilst ROE was negatively skewed by audit committee meetings. Though negative relations were found between ROA, ROE and some Audit committee variables as used in this study, the regression model used indicated that over 60% of variability in financial performance of the listed banks was due to Audit committee and fees.

I. INTRODUCTION

1.0 Background of the Study

In modern day business competitive environment, the goal for the establishment of firms and organizations is to make profit, grow and expand to provide services to customers though other scholars have posited that profit is not cash hence the ultimate goal should be maximization of shareholders wealth. Rustam, S., Rashid, K. and Zaman, K. (2013) posited that the problem of separation of ownership, corporate scandals and control in businesses as well as competition have become issues that distinguishes organizational performance and play crucial roles in determining the survival of businesses.
Auditing remains one of the key measures of corporate governance that has received increased attention through the numerous corporate scandals such as WorldCom or Enron (Rustam et al., 2013; Feng et al., 2011; Hosseini et al., 2010). This is because in most of the corporate scandals, managers followed their own selfish interests resulting to disintegration of the business and devastation of wealth of shareholders (Rustam et al., 2013).

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