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The purpose of this study is to report on the level of audit committee (AC) effectiveness on the top capitalized firms in GCC countries and to empirically investigate the hypothesized influence of ownership types on the level of AC effectiveness.

The empirical data were drawn from annual reports of 119 top listed firms in Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) nations at the end of 2011. Ordinary least squares regression analysis was constructed to examine the relationships between ownership types and the level of AC effectiveness.

The findings revealed that family, government and institutional ownership, in addition to board independence, all have significant positive association with AC effectiveness, and they serve as a complement to AC effectiveness.

The findings of the study are important for policy makers and regulators as they could use them to understand the relationship between different corporate governance mechanisms and formulating best strategies that would help them to improve and adopt an optimal governance system constituted from interacting governance mechanisms.

This study is one of few that have examined the interaction between different corporate governance mechanisms. It provides insights about the relationship between AC effectiveness and other governance mechanisms in the GCC context.

Motivated by lack of empirical research on sukuk (Islamic bonds) defaults and factors influencing the credit risk in sukuk industry, the study investigates the impact of corporate governance (CG) practices and corporate social sustainability (CS) disclosures on default risk of Islamic bonds in an emerging market.

In the Malaysian context the authors use generalized method of moments (GMM) to examine the mitigating effect of CG structure and CS disclosures on distance to default (DD) of sukuk issuers.

The results show that although both CG and CS have a significant and positive relationship with distance to default, the contribution of CS to augment DD is higher. Moreover, different CG variables have a varied relationship with distance to default, while the association is positive for all three pillars of CS, videlicet economic, social and environmental sustainability.

The findings of the study hold important implications for issuers, subscribers and regulators in the sukuk industry.

Limited research investigates the relationship between CG, CS and default risk of Islamic bonds. In light of this, the study attempts to fill the theoretical void in literature by examining the relationship among the underlying variables.