Steve W. Klemash is Americas Leader at the EY Center for Board Matters, Jennifer Lee is Audit and Risk Specialist at the EY Center for Board Matters, and Bridget M. Neill is Americas Vice Chair, Public Policy at EY. This post is based on their EY memorandum.
For the ninth consecutive year, the EY Center for Board Matters has reviewed voluntary proxy statement disclosures by Fortune 100 companies relating to audit committees, including their oversight of the audit.
These disclosures are an important tool for investors and other stakeholders to gain insight into the activities of audit committees, whose role in promoting high-quality and reliable financial reporting is widely acknowledged. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), for example, has affirmed that independent audit committees have proved to be one of the most effective financial reporting enhancements included in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. [1] The transparency provided by these disclosures can help strengthen investor confidence in financial reporting and US capital markets.
This post provides data on the types of audit committee-related disclosures that the largest public companies are providing on a voluntary basis, above what is required by US securities laws and regulations. It also includes some samples of the disclosures we examined to illustrate the information being provided to investors.
