This study empirically examines the association of audit committee chair tenure and various reporting quality measures in a German setting. As the debate about the role of tenure has refuelled since the German corporate governance codex first introduced an upper limit for director tenure in 2019, this topic is of particular importance. My findings show that longer tenured audit committee chairs are positively associated with higher levels of earnings management and negatively associated with the audit report lag and the likelihood of error identification by the German financial reporting enforcement panel. I draw upon social bonding to discuss these findings, which seem to be heterogeneous from a reporting quality perspective. I argue that social bonding between management and the AC chair drives the results for earnings management, while it does not impair the AC chair's influence on the audit process. My findings are important from a regulatory and practical perspective.

中文翻译：

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审计委员会主席任期的作用——德国视角

本研究实证检验了德国环境下审计委员会主席任期与各种报告质量措施之间的关系。自德国公司治理法典于 2019 年首次引入董事任期上限以来，关于任期作用的争论愈演愈烈，这一话题尤为重要。我的研究结果表明，任期较长的审计委员会主席与更高水平的盈余管理正相关，与审计报告滞后和德国财务报告执法小组识别错误的可能性负相关。我利用社会联系来讨论这些发现，从报告质量的角度来看，这些发现似乎是异质的。我认为管理层和 AC 主席之间的社会联系推动了盈余管理的结果，虽然它不会削弱 AC 主席对审计过程的影响。从监管和实践的角度来看，我的发现很重要。