The objective of this study is to analyse the impact of internal governance mechanisms related to the board of directors, the audit committee and the ownership structure on the value relevance of accounting earnings in the French context. Using the method of Panel Corrected Standard Errors in the context of panel data, we find that the CEO duality and the existence of an audit committee have a negative effect on the value relevance of accounting earnings while the ownership concentration and the institutional ownership contribute to increase the value relevance of earnings. Furthermore, the empirical results show that leverage and growth have a positive effect on the value relevance.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between ownership structure and earnings quality, proxied by earnings management and informativeness. This study focuses on a sample of 117 French companies belonging to the SBF 250 index during the period 2003-2011. For our analysis, we use the panel data econometrics and, more specifically, the method of Panel Corrected Standard Errors. The results of linear regressions show that managerial ownership has a positive impact on the earnings management and reveal that ownership concentration and institutional ownership have a positive impact on the earnings informativeness. In addition, the results of this study show the existence of non-linear relationship only for ownership concentration and institutional ownership.

Besides the size of the external auditor, which is a major determinant, audit fees depend also on audit market characteristics, corporate governance and ownership. On the basis of a sample of 130 French listed companies during the 2004–2006 period, we present evidence of a “Big” auditor premium. The results highlight that the presence of a “Big” among auditors has a positive and significant effect of the level of audit fees. This impact is more important in the case of joint audit by two “Big” auditors. The choice of a “Major” auditor also increases the level of audit fees. Finally, we find that governance and ownership characteristics act in different ways on auditor’s selection involving complementarity or substitution with external audit

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