Audit Quality and Share Price of Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria
Abstract
Share price is a very sensitive to the expression of confidence investors have on the stock of firms and it is influence by several factors including the quality of the audit of the financial statements. Against this background, this research investigates the effect of audit quality on share price of deposit money banks in Nigeria from 2013 to 2022. The specific objectives are to evaluate the effect of audit fee, audit firm tenure and audit firm size on share price. The sample size consists of seven deposit money banks which are quoted based on their banking operations only. The Lagrangian Multiplier test specified the adoption of the pooled Ordinary Least Squares regression techniques for estimating the model. The results show that audit fee has a significant positive effect on share price, audit firm tenure has a significant negative effect on share price, while audit firm size has an insignificant effect n share price of the banks examined. This research recommends that management of the Nigerian deposit money banks should try to pay fees charged, avoid long tenure for auditors and strive to engage the Big 4 audit firms for higher share prices.