AUDIT COMMITTEE ATTRIBUTES AND VALUE OF LISTED FIRMS IN NIGERIA: A CONCEPTUAL REVIEW

Abstract

Audit committee is the instrument of corporate governance mechanism that aims to boost or strengthen the management board's toward achieving corporate objective of shareholder wealth maximization. The paper reviewed prior literature including theories such as agency theory and resource dependence theory, as well relate the theories to the relationship between audit committee attributes (including; independence of audit committee member, financial expertise of audit committee, stock owned by audit committee member and size of audit committee) and market value of firm’s proxy by Tobin’s Q-ratio. Thereafter hypothesis was developed to test the relation between the independent variables (independence, financial expertise, stock owned by audit committee member and audit committee size) and dependent variable i.e., firm value. The outcome of systematic review of relevant literature in corporate governance mechanism, to be specific audit committee attribute that need to be empirically investigate in the context of listed firms in Nigeria. Such attribute like percentage of ownership to be represented on the audit committee and as well the size of the committee.