Ownership of local corporations and audit committee diligence: Empirical evidence from an emerging economy

This study examines whether local corporate ownership is associated with audit committee diligence among 431 listed manufactured firms in Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) for the period 2012-2019. Using the complementary hypothesis, this study expected that there is a positive relationship between local corporate ownership and audit committee diligence. The Pooled OLS regression shows that local corporate ownership is positively associated with audit committee diligence. The findings reported by this study have implications for regulators, companies’ managements, auditors, and creditors in a manner that they would gain a deeper understanding on how the local corporate ownership impacts the audit committee diligence.