Characteristics of the Chairman of Audit Committee and Timely Financial Reporting

Abstract

Objective: Information is the most important source of decision-making, and its important role in the capital market makes it the most important asset. The auditing profession provides useful data for potential investors to have informed decisions by providing information for companies in the form of financial statements. However, the speed of reaction and the right decision by investors depend on the qualitative characteristics of financial statements; and the most important one is timely access to information. According to the theoretical foundation of financial reporting, timely access to information is one of the limitations of financial reporting that overshadows the achievements of qualitative reporting characteristics. Timely annual financial reporting, as an information advantage, remains at the center of investors' attention. On the other hand, the various characteristics of the audit committee chair can overshadow the effectiveness of information disclosure outside and play an effective role in timely financial reporting. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of financial expertise and empirical features of audit committee chairman on timely financial reporting. Method. The statistical population of the study was all the companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during a 6-year period from 2013 to 2018. To test the research hypotheses, we used the OLS model with robust standard errors. Also, to control the confounding effects of industries and different years, we added dummy variables to the regression models. We could examine the confounding influences of industries and years, and the model fits correctly. Results. The results show that there is no significant relationship between financial expertise and empirical features of the audit committee chairman with a delay in the audit report. Also, the additional results obtained from the robustness test strongly support the results of the principal research model. Therefore, there is not enough evidence to support the research hypotheses. Conclusion. The results of the data analysis indicate that the financial expertise and the tenure of the Audit Committee chairman do not help to improve the timeliness of financial reporting. The results also show that the measures of corporate governance concerning the audit committee do not display the expected performance in the companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. The emergence of audit committees as well as the internal audit profession, which complements audit committees, can be a reason for this issue. Lack of knowledge and the necessary basic training, lack of clear instructions, the incomplete formation of audit committees and internal audit unit, and lack of full support of the company's senior management of the internal audit unit can be the reasons for the lack of impact. Over time, we expect more experiences and future reforms of audit committees to become more efficient and effective and to play a prominent role in improving corporate governance indicators.