The mean value of Strong AC is 0.370, indicating that over one third of our sample have a strong audit committee. In
untabulated analysis, we find that 15.4% of our sample observations do not have a fully independent audit committee, compared
to the 14% documented in Barua et al. (2010). In addition, 13.0% of the companies in our sample do not have a financial
expert on the audit committee. The average stock ownership of audit committee members in our sample is 0.3%, which is
consistent with the average stock ownership of independent directors in Ahmed and Duellman (2007).