The main purpose of this study is to investigate factors affecting audit fees in private commercialrnbanking industries. This investigation is focused on 13 private commercial banking industries usingrnpurposively sampling technique and collected primary data of 113 respondents out of 117 that werernexpected to represent population. The board of directors, audit committees, internal controllers,rninternal auditors and the finance directors of the selected private commercial banks are the sourcesrnfor the required data to the researcher through the questionnaires administered and self-collected. Inrnaddition, used the secondary data to analysis the bank size (total assets) verse audit costs fromrnannual audited financial statements of 5 years from (2010/11 to 2014/15) of those private banks.rnThe findings from regression and correlation analysis of the pooled data at 10% level ofrnsignificance result revealed that all board characteristics, audit committee characteristics, auditrnquality, audit firm size , audit risk and bank size are found to be the major factors influencing thernvariation in audit fees in the Ethiopian commercial banking industries. Typically, boardrncharacteristics, audit committee characteristics and in turn audit qualities are inversely connectedrnwith audit fee. In addition, the audit risks, audit complexity, audit firm size and bank size directlyrnaffects audit fees. Therefore, private commercial banking industries thus better focus on factors thatrndeemed to have significant effect with audit fees; being it results to audit quality assurance which isrnnearsighted by government and shareholder as well by the concerned bodies.rnKey words: Audit fees, board of directors, audit committee, audit complexity, bank size, audit firmrnsize, audit risk and audit quality, Ethiopian private commercial banking industryrnCorrelation and regression analysis