Audit Committee and Financial Performance in Jordan:The Moderating Effect of Ownership Concentration

Ownership concentration (OC) can affect a wide range of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms. Jordan is characterized by high OC such as family ownership and managerial ownership. The effectiveness of the audit committee (AC) as one of the major CG mechanisms is affected by OC, which in turn, affects accounting and market-based performance among Jordanian listed companies. Based on this fact, it is believed that OC can moderate the relationship between AC on accounting and market based performance in Jordan. The main purpose of this study is to examine the moderating effect of OC between audit committee effectiveness (ACE) and accounting and market based performance in Jordan. This study used data obtained from 828 firm-year observations of companies listed in Amman stock exchange (ASE) in industrial and service sectors from 2009 to 2017. The findings display that OC has a direct positive effect on ROE and ROA and a negative direct effect on TQ. The results revealed that OC positively moderated the relationship between ACE and ROE as well as ROA. However, OC did not moderate the effect of ACE on Tobin’s Q (TQ). Overall, the hypotheses are accepted in terms of ROA and ROE while it is rejected in terms of Tobin’s Q. OC only moderated the effect of ACE on ROA and ROE but not on TQ.