Board Profile and Audit Committee's Activity: Evidence from Malaysian Government-Linked Companies

Recent corporate failure has led to a great call for an audit committee to increase its monitoring roles. Hence, this study aims to examine the relationship of board profile particularly on board size, board independence and board diligence towards audit committee activity. This activity is proxied by the frequency of audit committee meetings held during the year. This study uses data from the annual report of 66 firm-year observation samples of Government-Linked Companies (GLCs) for the year 2007 to 2009. The regression result shows that board independence has positive significant relationship with the activity of audit committee. A positive significant relationship was also found between board diligence and audit committee activity. However, there is insignificant relationship between board size and the activity of audit committee. Generally, this study concludes that increasing in board independence and board diligence; it should increase the performance of audit committee in GLC.