Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of audit committee characteristics
on the net margin of Land and Property Companies in Sri Lanka.The population
of the study comprises firms listed under Land and Property sector in Colombo
Stock Exchange. The number of firms listed underLandand Property sector in
Colombo Stock Exchange as at the time of data collection (2018) was 19, out of
which 10 were used as sample for this study. The data were collected for the period
from 2012 to 2018 and obtained from the web site of Colombo Stock Exchange.
Audit committee members and audit committee independence are considered as
independent variables of study. The dependent variable was net margin of the firm
which obtained directly through the annual reports of the companies. In addition to
this board meetings, company age, board size were considered as control variables
in this study. To test the hypothesis of this study, simple least square regression
was utilized by using EViews 8 version.
The findings suggest a significant positive relationship between audit committee
members, company age, board size and net margin. Also there is a significant
negative relationship between auditor independence and net margin. Board meeting
shows an insignificant relationship with the net margin. Due to lack of researches
covering this areas in Sri Lankan Land and Property sector, this study would
provide additional knowledge to future researchers and academicians.
