This paper examines the effect of audit committee appointments
on shareholder wealth in Korea after the Asian financial crisis.
We find that stock prices generally increase with audit committee
appointments. In contrast, chaebol (business group) affiliates and
firms switching audit committee membership are associated with
significantly lower stock returns, probably due to the management’s
opportunistic behavior. However, the independence and
financial literacy of the audit committee members appear to mitigate
the opportunistic behavior. Therefore, our result confirms that
the characteristics of the audit committee strengthen or weaken
the existing corporate governance. We discuss the implications of
our results obtained under Korea’s unique corporate governance
structure.