An empirical examination of the determinants of audit report delay in France

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to investigate the determinants of delay in publishing audited reports. Design/methodology/approach The research is conducted on a sample of French listed companies, covering the period of five years (from 2010 to 2014). The authors use pooled ordinary least squares regression analysis, modeling audit delay as a function of the following explanatory variables relating to the attributes of companies and their auditors. Findings A statistically significant association is found between audit delay and type of audit firm, audit opinion, firm size, the month of year-end and profitability. The results suggest that audit delay lag is reduced by appointing an international audit firm but is extended by aspects of qualified audit opinion. Originality/value The contribution of this paper is to investigate audit report in a developed capital market by taking advantage of access to proprietary data on audit timing and audit opinion. This allowed to overcome some of the problems of data quality that inhibit importing research methods from France to other advanced capital markets.

Environmental Audit and Environmental Disclosure Quality

“…Thus, audited companies by an international auditing firm "BIG4" are the first who have a tendency to disclose their environmental information which is in the CSR reports to different users. This finding is consistent with the findings of Daoud et al (2014); Fauzi and Locke (2012); Khoufi and Khoufi (2018) noted that due to greater resources owned by large firms such as adequate qualified staff can reduce the time taken to complete the audit work. So, our third hypothesis H3 is thus confirmed.…”

“…Cormier and Magnan (1999), Cormier and Magnan (2003) and Aerts et al (2008) in their studies based on a sample of Canadian firms, found a negative relationship between debt level and environmental disclosure. Moreover, financial debt has been studied empirically by some researchers to assess whether it bears any relationship to timeliness disclosure (Al-Ajmi, 2008;Khasharmeh and Aljifri, 2010;Khoufi and Khoufi, 2018). Khasharmeh and Aljifri (2010) and Al-Ajmi (2008) showed that the level of debt is an influential factor on timely disclosure and concluded that timely disclosure determines the quality of disclosure.…”

“…For financial information, timeliness disclosure is often represented by the number of days between the end of the year and the date of the publishing of the financial statements (Kachouri and Jarboui, 2017;Oladipupo and Okafor, 2013). Some studies like those of Guidara et al (2014); Khoufi and Khoufi (2018); Owusu-Ansah and Leventis (2006) measure the timeliness of the disclosure by the difference between the closing date of the financial statement and the date of the auditor's signature. In our study, and in the context of extra-financial information and, more specifically, environmental information, we measured timeliness disclosure (T.PERIOD) by the difference between the year-end and the date of the signing of one of the statutory auditors' reports, who is appointed as independent third party on social, environmental and societal information.…”

“…However, the publication of environmental information follows the same publication schedule as the management report or the reference document, if applicable, and meets the same time constraints. So, the ultimate goal of timely disclosure of listed French companies is to satisfy the demand of the shareholders, particularly foreign investors (Khoufi and Khoufi, 2018).…”

Toward an Archival Measure of the Likelihood of Auditor–Client Management Negotiation: An Exploration of the Audit Lag Measures Conjecture*

“…Therefore, any future studies using data from the post‐December 15, 2010, period need to take this new auditing standard into account in their research design. However, evidence about ARL that uses data exclusively after the adoption of the revised international standard suggests that there are no changes in the audit report lag model determinants (Khoufi and Khoufi, 2018). Given the changes to the standard, we call for research on the ARL model that incorporates post the implementation of this new international reporting date convention evidence on ARL determinants.…”