This section presents detailed trends about various
characteristics of an AC, such as, their size, composition
and activity, as well as, extent of non-audit services
provided by the auditors in the Indian corporations. These
trends are presented for the top 500 listed corporations in
India, based on their market capitalization as on March
31, 2008, for four years covering the financial years
2005-06 to 2008-09. As stated earlier under the research
methodology, all the required annual reports and other
secondary sources of information in respect of the top 500
listed corporations were outsourced (courtesy, Sarkar and
Sarkar) and extracted from the private database maintained
by SANSCO services (www.sansco.net). Moreover,Tables
3 to 8 are constructed based on the disclosures made
in the “Corporate Governance Reports” filed by these
corporations. In fact, the year2006 marks the year when all
the listed firms were required to comply with there vised
provisions of the SEBI’s Listing Clause 49, which were
first notified on October 29, 2004 butcame into effect from
January 1, 2006. Table 4 summarizes AC trends from the
size view point.