The purpose of this paper is to try to explain in the Moroccan context the impact of the presence of audit committees on the remuneration of external auditors including the auditors.
The sample includes 27 companies divided on four sectors of activity. This limited number of firms studied is due to the requirements of the Dechow, Sloan and Sweeny (1995) model of the earning management, which requires a minimum of six (6) companies by sector.
The analysis of the proposed model via the stepwise method allows in highlighting an indirect relationship between the Audit Committee and the remuneration of the auditors. This relationship is explained by: (1) The size of the company, meaning, the bigger the size of the company, the larger the earnings management, which requires a high remuneration of the auditors. (2) The percentage held by the leaders influence the remuneration received by the auditors.
The results obtained explained by the size of the company (1) and the percentage held by its leaders (2) allow in concluding that the latter foster the establishment of audit committees which in turn allows in increasing the remuneration of the auditors.