The Board Of Directors Of Listed Companies In China Features Impact On The Audit Fee Research

CSRS promulgated some documents Involving the public companies have to disclose audit fees in Annual Report from 2002, December 24, 2001. It become the base of scholars' researches about the audit fees undoubtedly. Therefore, there emerged a large number of documents related audit fees in recent years. The Board of Directors and independent audit as linking the shareholders and managers of the internal and external ties play a two-pronged effect. However, whether they have played an effective supervisory role? And what is the relationship between the board and independent audit in the end? As China's A-share public companies as an example, this paper attempts to make a positive research analysising the relationship between the board of directors characteristics and audit fees. It will provide some reference for improving the board of directors system in public companies and enhancing the risk awareness of accounting firms.The audit pricing formation was impact by many internal and external factors in audit services market, which the board governance of public companies an important internal factor. Independent audit supervision and the board supervision to manager are based on a common oversight commission-agency theory. The board of directors characteristics is that can be quantize the board governance. The relationship between the board of directors characteristics and audit fees is mainly based on audit-demand perspective and audit-risk perspective. However, audit-demand perspective is applied to a more mature capital market, and the new auditing standard also embodies the modern concept of risk-oriented audit. This article holds that audit-risk perspective is more compatible with the situation of China, so audit-risk perspective will as part of the main empirical theory. This paper selected 772 A-share public companies of Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets in 2005, 2006 as a sample, using variables descriptive statistics, single-variable analysis and multiple linear regression methods to study China's A-share public companies' board of directors characteristics' impact on audit fees.The main conclusion of the study is: the board size, the chairman making part-time in shareholders units, the compensation and the equity ratio of the board are significantly related to audit fees. However, the proportion of independent directors, the chairman & general manager of the two posts into one, the quantity of the board of directors and the establishment of Audit Committee have no significant correlation with audit fees. This paper conducted a detailed analysis to the empirical results. In the end we make some recommendations about strengthening the links between the board of directors of public companies and independent audit, optimizating the board governance structure of public companies in our country, perfecting public companies' annual report disclosure system of audit fees, enhancing awareness of the risk of CPA, and so on.