The impact of investment opportunities on the relationship between cash Holdings level and audit fees: an Empirical study on firms listed on Egyptian Stock Exchange

Research Objective: The study aimed to analyze and test the impact of cash holdings level on the audit fees of firms listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange, and the impact of investment opportunities on this relationship.
Research methodology: The study relied on the content analysis in examining the actual historical data in the annual financial statements of a sample consisting of ( 53) firms listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange during the period from 2015 to 2020, for a number of (318) observations, to test the research hypotheses that reflect the relationship between cash holdings level and audit fees, using a set of statistical methods represented in the Pearson correlation coefficient and the multiple regression model.
Results and Recommendations: The results of this research indicate a positive and significant correlation between the Cash Holdings level and Audit fees for firms listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange. Also, Investment opportunities affects negatively on the relationship between the Cash Holdings level and the audit fees for firms listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange.
Based on these results, Egyptian firms should pay more attention to the cash Holdings level and try to reach to the optimal level at which a balance is achieved between the benefits and costs of its presence in the company, because of its effects on achieving economic health in the financial markets, and should pay more attention to designing  and implementing effective internal control systems to reduce the opportunistic behavior of managers, and setting controls to reduce agency problems, and work to assign the appropriate amount of cash to investment opportunities with a high growth rate in order to achieve balance of cash holdings level.