We investigate how the number of audit committee chair positions and other
audit committee financial expertise positions held by the audit committee chairman and the
audit committee financial experts affects their ability to oversee a company’s financial
reporting process. We argue that these two audit committee roles are vital to the functioning
of the audit committee and that their over commitment affects audit committee oversight
and the firm’s financial reporting quality. We observe a significant negative association
between financial reporting quality and the number of audit committee chair positions and
other audit committee financial expertise positions held by the audit committee chairman.
We also find a significant negative association between financial reporting quality and the
number of audit committee chair positions and other audit committee financial expertise
positions held by audit committee financial experts. Firms with busy audit committee chairs
or busy financial experts have significantly higher levels of abnormal accruals, and are more
likely to meet or beat earnings benchmarks, which is consistent with the busyness
hypothesis. This adverse effect, nonetheless, does not extend to nonaudit committee chairs
and nonaudit committee financial experts. We interpret these results to indicate that the
busyness of the audit committee chair and financial expert weakens the monitoring and
oversight role that audit committees play in the financial reporting process.