The concept of Shariah governance has its foundation in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Shariah (which literally means "the way") is the divinely ordained guidelines of conduct for Muslims in all aspects of their life, which includes financial matters. Any form of transaction, irrespective of financial or otherwise, must be free of any element of injustice to the transacting parties.

Evidence of audit failures documented worldwide have led to major criticism of the auditing professions' independence and exposed its implication on shareholders and stakeholders' interests. External auditors are expected not only be independent but more importantly must be seen to be independent when examining and attesting clients' financial statements. Auditors are expected to decide on reporting strategies without any influence from their clients' management.

This study provides new evidence on the relationship between external audit price and corporate governance of the largest (based on market capitalization) 100 listed firms on both the main and second board of the Bursa Malaysia (BMB) (previously known as the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange). The findings show that for main board companies, external audit price is positively and significantly associated with corporate size, complexity and internal governance variable (i.e. director's remuneration). For the second board firms, complexity, corporate size and internal governance variables (i.e. proportion of non-executive directors to total directors) were important determinants of external audit pricing. External audit price had a significant negative relationship with individual shareholders ownership for both main and second board companies, and companies' age for companies listed on the second board.

Over the last few decades, the Islamic financial system has shown a strong and improved performance, where the global total assets of the industry as of end 2014 has exceeding USD2.0 trillion or a compounded annual growth rate (GACR) of 17.4% between 2009 and 2014. The Malaysia International Islamic Financial Centre (MIFC) reported monumental issuances in sovereign sukuks by the governments of the UK, Senegal, Hong Kong, South Africa and Luxembourg ammounting to USD 115 billion.

Documented evidence on conventional bond markets shows negative market reaction to bond credit rating downgrade and no reaction to credit rating upgrade. Despite the fact that sukuk issuances make up more than 58.8% of the value of outstanding bonds in the country and Malaysia issues at least half of the world's sukuk and is widely recognized as a leader in the sukuk space, there is no documented evidence on the stock market reaction to sukuk credit rating changes. This study analyzed the wealth effect of sukuk credit rating changes in Malaysia using 16 sukuk upgrades and 20 sukuk downgrades for the period 2000-2014. The evidence shows negative market reaction to downgrades and positive significant reaction to sukuk rating upgrade. This symmetrical market reaction to sukuk credit rating changes implies the market was indifferent between bonds and sukuk from the credit rating perspective. This finding supports the notion that the credit rating agencies are Shariah-neutral when rating these capital market instruments.

This book integrates empirical studies and conceptual discussion in the field of accounting and finance in Malaysia and international setting. The aim of this book is to share findings of empirical results as well as conceptual discussion and to provide reading and reference materials on various accounting and finance topics to undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers through relevant information provided. This book consists of ten chapters. Specifically, it is presented into three parts, namely corporate internet reporting and social responsibility reporting, auditor independence and corporate governance and Islamic finance.

An effective system of rules, practices and processes by which Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs) are directed and controlled to ensure their business operations are Shariah-compliant, which has important implications on their reputation, Shariah governance and the future growth of Islamic finance industry. Sixteen Chairmen of the Shariah Committees of Islamic financial institutions in Malaysia were interviewed on the challenges faced in carrying out their responsibilities and theri views on effective Shariah Committees. This paper summarizes the various challenges faced by Shariah committees in Islamic financial institutions in Malaysia.

Malaysia experienced rapid economic growth at an average annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 8.5% during the 1990s due to its financial liberalization policy. This rapid growth came to a halt after the impact of the Asian financial crisis occurred on 1997-1998 causing the economy into recession. This prompted the Malaysian government to urgently develop a sophisticated capital market backed by an efficient regulatory framework to instil investors' confidence in order to attract capital inflow from the local and foreign investors to restart the economy.

Islamic finance industry has grown rapidly over the last few years, where the 2018 Islamic Finance Development Report by Thomson Reuters reported that the year on year growth by of 11% to US$2.4 trillion in assets in 2017 and predicted that it would grow to $3.8tn of assets by 2023 (Thomson Reuters, 2018). Realising the importance of the industry, this book examines various issues on Accounting and Governance of Islamic financial institutions. In fact, the unique feature of Islamic financ that is based on the shariah principle warrants critical examination on various issues relating to accounting of Islamic financial transactions. Basically, business dealings are prohibited to contain component of riba (interest), gharar (uncertainty) and maysir (gambling/speculation), and trading of actual assets and share the risk between participants are encouraged. Thus, scholars posited different views as to whether the key concept of current accounting principles such as time value of money, substance over form, principles of probability and accrual basis are permissible. The book also covers accounting issues on various Islamic finance products and Shariah governance of Islamic financial institutions.

This chapter provides new findings to accounting and finance literature, where, it compares the conceptual framework of both of the MASB- and the AAOIFI- in the context of financial reporting of Islamic financial institutions (IFls). The conceptual framework or some authors referred as "accounting constitution" set the tone for a consistent accounting standards and become a reference point for developing future standards for financial accounting and reporting (Barker et al., 2014; Abela et al., 2014; Holzmann & Munter, 2014 (Sutton et al., 2015; Gebhardt et aI., 2014; Norby, 1977; Gore & Zimmerman, 2007). In this context, more than 120 countries (including major players in Islamic finance like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and many others) are adopting IASB' financial reporting regime in financial reporting of IFIs, and only six countries like Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Sudan are employing the AAOIFI accounting standards ...

This book contains a compilation of studies on selected issues in accounting and finance. These studies are conducted in Malaysian context except one study based in Egypt. The studies cover significant topics in auditing, taxation, accounting education, corporate governance and finance.