Effectiveness of Audit Committees in the Turkish Banking Sector

The audit committees play a significant role on oversight function of the companies’ boards over their audit and financial reporting systems. U.S. Securities Exchange Commission Act; defined audit committee as an equivalent body established by and amongst the board of directors of an issuer for the purpose of overseeing the accounting and as a financial reporting processes of the issuer and audits of the financial statements of the issuer. According to Turkish Banking Law 5411 Article 24 bank should establish audit committees for the execution of the audit and monitoring functions of board of directors and should consist of minimum two members who do not have any executive duties. In Turkey the auditing committee practices in banks are monitored and supervised by Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency. In this study we examine whether the annual meeting number of audit committees have an effect over the banks financial performance in the means of loans under legal follow-up. The study is planned to include data of 3 governmental depository banks which are settled in Turkey