Les comités d'audit en France: un an après le rapport Viénot

Audit committees are viewed as a relevant mechanism allowing to improve the corporate governance in the French context. Several factors encourage the formation of audit committees:management misbehavior, the weakness of the performances of certain companies, the inter-nationalization of the financing of the firms and the activism of blockholders and minority shareholders, etc. This study uses an agency theory framework to investigate the incentives for voluntary formation of audit committees in France, one year after the publication of the Viénot Report. Based on 1995 data from a sample of listed companies, empirical results show that several characteristics are found to be associated with the voluntary formation of an audit committee