Audit Committee

The Audit Committee is the audit committee of the supervisory body . In German and Austrian stock corporations , the supervisory body is the supervisory board ; in Switzerland it is the board of directors .

The establishment of an Audit Committee is recommended as part of corporate governance in the German Corporate Governance Code for German stock corporations, in accordance with the Swiss Code of Best Practice and the Austrian Corporate Governance Code .

Objectives and functioning of the audit committee as a body of the administrative board - the practical design depends heavily on the legal framework and legal form; A distinction is made between the one-tier and the two-tier models - these are generally outlined in the 2004 OECD Corporate Governance Principles and in the European Commission's Corporate Governance Action Plan (COM (2003) 284 fin).

Main tasks

The main tasks vary from country to country and above all from company to company. In principle, the Audit Committee is responsible for:

• the supervision of financial reporting
• Monitoring of the risk management system
  (usually regulated separately for financial service providers)
• Monitoring of the internal control system (ICS) and compliance

It forms the interface between the supervisory body, external and internal auditors on the one hand and the management responsible for the operation of the control systems on the other.

Legal bases

Germany

The law for the modernization of accounting law (Accounting Law Modernization Act - BilMoG ) of May 25, 2009 stipulated in Section 324 of the Commercial Code (HGB) that "capital market-oriented corporations " must set up an audit committee under certain conditions.

literature

• Stefan Rössler: The audit committee as a monitoring instrument for the supervisory board. A contribution to the improvement of corporate governance against the background of the law on control and transparency in the corporate sector (KonTraG) (=  publications on auditing, taxation and controlling . Volume 5 ). Verlag Moderne Industrie, Landsberg (Lech) 2001, ISBN 3-478-39943-2 (also: University of Hamburg, dissertation, 2001).

Web links

General

• IFRS Primer for Audit Committees . (PDF; 496 kB) American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)

Germany

• Website of the Audit Committee Institute of the auditing company KPMG

Switzerland

• Swiss Code of Best Practice for Corporate Governance . (PDF; 1.41 MB) - New edition from February 2008 on the homepage of the economic umbrella association economiesuisse; the audit committee (the audit committee) is dealt with in Chapter II g items 23-24

Austria

• Austrian Corporate Governance Code . (PDF; 248 kB) Version January 2009, see No. 40