The 2019 Audit Committee Transparency Barometer—issued annually by the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) and Audit Analytics—indicated investor confidence in audit committee effectiveness was strong and had increased 10 percentage points since the first Barometer report was issued in 2014. The CAQ believes greater transparency about audit committee responsibilities will strengthen this confidence even further.
The Barometer, published in November, evaluates how public company audit committees communicate their oversight activities over their external auditors to the public. It also measures the percentage of certain categories of proxy disclosures by companies in the S&P Composite 1500 (S&P 1500) and provides examples of effective proxy disclosures based on filings from July 1, 2018, through June 30, 2019. It includes results for S&P 500, MidCap, and SmallCap companies.
