This article examines financial statement filing lags among a sample of Belgian small firms. Our results indicate that around one-third of small firm financial statements are filed late (after the legal deadline), but that monetary sanctions could be an effective tool to encourage compliance with legal deadlines. Whereas the deadline and late filing sanctions are filing incentives, various factors, such as firm size and presence of an external financial statement audit, also affect financial statement filing lags. Evidence indicated that extremely late filings were associated with lower financial statement quality.

Literature on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) performance and wealth effects is abundant. Yet, we know very little about the pre-completion stage, in particular about aspects such as the likelihood of deal closing and time to completion. Understanding the drivers of completion time is however important as prolonged deal duration is costly and postpones realizing synergy gains. In this article, we study the antecedents of deal duration for a sample of 1150 M&As between listed US companies during 1994-2011. Not surprisingly, deal complexity critically affects time to completion. Stock offers, deal hostility, mergers and larger deals are characterized by a lengthier acquisition duration. Strong and clear shareholder support accelerates deal completion, as does the likelihood of overpayment. Finally, experienced bidders succeed in more rapidly completing transactions, implying learning effects.