IFRS Adoption and Audit Delay: The Role of Shareholders in the Audit Committee

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between audit delay after IFRS adoption and the role of shareholders in the audit committee as well as testing the difference of pre-and post IFRS adoption periods. A sample of 101 firms with 505 firm-year observations over five year period for firms listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange was employed for the study, utilizing data from the annual report and accounts of the sample firms. Generalized Methods of Moment (GMM) estimation was used to check the effects of unobserved heterogeneity in audit delay model, while the test of difference in R2 value for pre-and post-adoption periods was determined using Cramer’s Z-statistics. Findings indicate that audit report lag is faster with shareholders in the audit committee. The study proved that brand named auditors such as Big4 can significantly perform faster audit task than non-Big4 firms in IFRS regime. The importance of the study’s findings demonstrates statistical inference on value relevance increase based on the unique IFRS adoption in Nigeria. Thus, regulators should consider increasing the tenure of shareholders in the audit committee to enable them to become more familiar with the corporate reporting under IFRS regime.