Financial Reporting Delay and Investors Behavior: Evidence from Tunisia

Abstract

This study empirically investigates the relationship between the timeliness of the financial reporting and the corporate governance proxies for companies listed on the Tunisian stock exchange during 2009. It investigates the role of the corporate governance mechanisms on the timeliness of corporate financial reporting besides; it investigates the relationship between the company size, leverage, profitability (good news), and the timeliness of corporate financial reporting. Using a multivariate analysis, we find evidence that ownership concentration, the CEO’s duality function, and good news have some impact on the interim period between the auditors’ signature dates and the publication dates, hence, on the timeliness of the release of financial statement information to the public