Effects of Auditor Regulations and Corporate Governance on Accounting Earnings Quality in Listed Deposit Money Bank of Nigeria

Abstract

Auditor regulation(AR) is concerned with ensuring that auditors follow best practice standard in conducting the auditing, competent, independent and capable of detecting significant errors in financial statement and reporting faithfully on them. Reports of prevalence of fraud, excessive earning management(EM) and other financial crises placed doubt in the financial statement and led to serious questions being asked of the audit profession and regulation. In this study, effects of audit fees(AFEE), audit firm size(AFS),and audit firm tenure (AFT) on accounting earnings quality (EQ) and extent at which board independence (BI), Board size (BS) Audit strength (AFSTH) and ownership structure (OS) influenced EQ in listed deposit money banks (DMBs) of Nigeria were examined. This study made use of secondary data obtained from annual reports and accounts of selected banks from 2013 to 2022. Purposive Sampling technique was adopted to select twelve (12) banks out of fifteen banks. Panel regression model was used to examine effect of ARV, CGV on EQ while multiple correlation was adopted to determine the joint relationship between AR, CG and EQ. Findings showed that AR and CG has significant effect on EQ. It is therefore recommended that regulatory authority should periodically review and update auditor regulations to align with international best practices and evolving financial reporting standards.