The Determinants of Audit Fees : The Case of the Banking Industry in Malaysia

The issue of audit fees and non-audit fees charged by the audit firms has been discussed regularly in accounting and auditing literature. Recently, due to the corporate scandals in United States, especially the Enron scandal, the issue is discussed together with a host of revelations about audit failures that led to companies' demise. Auditing profession is being badly blamed and suggested to
change due to the audit firm's reliance more on non-audit services than the audit itself. Therefore, this study attempts to probe the situation in Malaysia using banking
sector as the subject of interest. Specifically, it tries to examine the impact of non audit services conducted by audit firms to these banks over audit fees. The results show that the variable of non-audit fees is statistically significant in determining audit fees. Similarly, in the sensitivity analysis, the results are robust. Thus, the present study shows a new variable, in the form of the "types" of banks, that has significant impact on audit fees. This study also supports Rose (1999) and Ayoib (2001) studies that foreign companies pay more on audit fees than the local companies. Hence, these findings
give opportunity to the other researchers to study on audit fees and non-audit fees by using larger sample size and other sectors.