Yes / This paper, using data from 100 UK listed firms, investigates the relationship between audit committee characteristics and intellectual capital (IC) disclosure. We find that overall IC disclosure is positively associated with audit committee characteristics such as the size and frequency of meetings, and negatively associated with audit committee directors’ shareholding. We find no significant relationship between IC disclosure and audit committee independence and financial expertise. We also observe that the association between audit committee characteristics and IC disclosure varies with the IC components (i.e. human capital, structural capital and relational capital), suggesting that the underlying factors that drive various components of IC disclosure are different. These results have important implications for policy-makers in that they confirm that the effectiveness of audit committees in the corporate reporting processes is a function of certain characteristics.

There is an increasing need for companies to act more responsibly in sustainability related issues due to pressures from their stakeholders. This increased pressure comes with a corresponding need for companies to report on their actions. As the stakeholders of companies do not have the opportunity to assess the credibility of the reporting themselves, the responsibility falls upon a third party to give assurance on the contents of the report. The assurance of such will be an important part in providing reliability to the sustainability work and report. One important corporate governance function responsible for overseeing the sustainability reporting and the assurance thereof is the audit committee. Therefore, this study will examine the effect of audit committee characteristics on the quality of sustainability assurance. Due to the novelty of the concept of sustainability assurance and as not many previous studies have addressed the issue of the quality, the authors proposed the following research question: “How do audit committee characteristics influencesustainability assurance quality?”. The findings from the study are analyzed through the shareholder-stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, agency theory and the resource dependency theory. The shareholder-stakeholder and legitimacy theory are used to analyze the audit committees role as a governance function and the agency and resource dependency theory are applied to the different characteristics. This quantitative study includes data from the top 100 publicly listed companies in Sweden with a separate audit committee appointed by and amongst the board. The study uses observations from the fiscal year 2021, with data collected through content analysis. This thesis is conducted under a positivist paradigm, with a deductive approach. The data is tested through OLS regression, and the analysis is conducted with grounds in previous literature and theory. The results of this study are in some respects in line with a previous study but has also found differing results. Companies with audit committees with at least one member with industry expertise are more likely to have higher quality assurance on their sustainability report. Apart from the previous study, this study did not find a significant relationship of the independence and meeting frequency of audit committees. A significant relationship was neither found to the gender diversity, size, or experience of audit committees. Therefore, the authors can conclude that the research question is answered and that the results indicate that the audit committee may not be the best explanatory basis for the quality of sustainability assurance.

Title: The relationship between Key Audit Matters and Audit Committees: A quantitative study on 310 Swedish companies.   Level: Master Programme in Business Administration, Accounting.   Author: Albin Eriksson and Emilia Thunell   Supervisor: Asif M Huq   Date: 2023 - May   Aim: The purpose of this thesis is to see how the quality of the audit committee relates to the number of key audit matters in the audit report. The quality of the audit committee will be determined through meeting frequency, independence in the audit committee, size of the committee, diversity in the committee, if the members are getting remuneration explicit for being in the audit committee, how many words that describe the work of the audit committee in the annual reports, and if the committee is separated from the board of directors, so-called dedicated.   Method: This is a quantitative study that has been conducted with descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, VIF analysis, multivariate regression, univariate regression, and a Poisson regression to ensure the result in the multivariate analysis.   Results and conclusions: The result of this thesis shows a significant relationship between our dependent variable key audit matters and two of our independent variables, meeting frequency and remuneration. The conclusion is that the institutional structure can have an impact on the audit committee's effect on key audit matters, since Swedish companies already have a lot of corporate governance mechanisms, which can mean that companies get more ineffective in having an audit committee.    Contribution of the thesis: The theoretical contribution is a broad view on the characteristics effect on key audit matters, and a contribution to the research in a strong institutional structure. The practical contribution is that companies can use this study to evaluate if they need an audit committee or not.    Suggestions for future research: Suggestions for future research is to examine more EU countries, to see if EU regulations have a major impact on companies corporate governance, or if the institutional differences in the different countries have a bigger impact.    Key words: Key Audit Matters, Audit Committee, Agency Theory, Audit committee characteristics, Institutional structure