INSTITUTIONAL SHAREHOLDING A MODERATOR TO AUDIT COMMITTEE CHARACTERISTICS AND EARNINGS MANAGEMENT OF LISTED CONGLOMERATE FIRMS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The relevance of audit committee characteristics in constraining managerial opportunistic tendencies has been explored by various researchers; the confrontational view in terms of the direction of their relationship has paint a vague picture which begs the introduction of other monitoring mechanism that may give a clear cut picture on direction of this relationship. This study uses two-stage least squares model and examines the impact of audit committee characteristics, institutional shareholding on discretionary accruals of listed conglomerate firms in Nigeria. Secondary data were extracted from the annual reports of 6 most active listed firms on the Nigerian Stock Exchange for the period 2006 to 2015. After running the OLS regression, a robustness test was conducted for validity of statistical inferences. A multiple regression was employed using HACC Model. The study documents that audit committee characteristic and institutional shareholding has significant impact on earnings management of the firms, specifically, audit committee size, audit committee financial expertise and institutional shareholding are inversely related with earnings management, while audit committee independence is positively and significantly related with earnings management, but there is no such impact of audit committee meetings. Furthermore, institutional shareholding and audit committee size are inversely related with earnings management; audit committee independence and institutional shareholding are positively, strongly and significantly constraining earnings management, while audit committee financial expertise with committees’ meetings and institutional shareholding reveals no impact on earnings management. In line with the findings, the study recommended  that regulatory bodies like CAMA, SEC, and NSE should ensure that listed conglomerate firms in Nigeria strictly adhere with code of best practice so that the interest of various stakeholder’s would be fully protected.