Investigating the Effects of Audit Committee Quality on Cash Holdings Level

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between audit committee quality and cash holdings level. In this study, the ratio of Ozkan and Ozkan (2004) was used for measuring cash holdings, and the suggested variables of Pearson and Rohana (2014), and of Hisham (2014) were used for determining the quality of audit committee. The research period spans 5 years from 2011 to 2015 and the sample size includes 131 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange. The ordinary least squares method was used to test the research hypotheses. Findings from hypotheses tests showed that after adjusting the control variables there were significant positive relationships between the indicators of independence of audit committee, specialty of the members of audit committee, the size of audit committee and the number of meetings of audit committee and the measure of level of cash holdings of company. The results indicated that independence of audit committee had the largest impact and size of audit committee had the smallest impact on cash holdings. Hence, with regard to the findings, it could be declared that increase in company's audit committee quality raises the level of and management ability of cash holdings. As a result, it is suggested that companies to increase cash holdings to protect themselves from background risks need to realize the importance of audit committee quality.

Keywords

• cash holdings
• audit committee quality
• stock exchange