CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND TIMELINESS OF LISTED FAMILY-OWNED FIRMS IN NIGERIA: MODERATING ROLE OF AUDITOR’S TYPE

Abstract

Research question: What are the moderating effects of auditors’ type on corporate governance and timeliness of financial reporting among listed family-owned firms in Nigeria?

Motivation: Timely issuance of audited annual financial report is highly desirable to various stakeholders against top management insider trading on the accounting information of which family-owned listed firms is highly prone to involve.

Idea: This study examined the effect of corporate governance on timeliness of listed family-owned firms in Nigeria. Specifically, the study investigated the moderating effect of auditor’s type on corporate governance and timeliness of financial statements of listed family-owned businesses in Nigeria.

Data: The data used and evaluated covered a period from 2012 to 2022, and were drawn from 39 listed family-owned firms in Nigeria. The secondary data were obtained from Machame Ratio database.

Tools: Both descriptive statistics and OLS regression analyses were performed.

Findings: The overall results revealed that board size, board gender diversity, audit fee, leverage, audit committee independence, size, meeting and gender diversity have positive effect on timeliness of financial reporting, indicating a significant statistical effect for audit committee independence and size. Therefore, the result established that increase in audit committee independence will increase the timely issuance of financial statement, also more members on the audit committee will as well increase the period at which listed firms publish their financial reports.

Contribution: This study’s contributions to the body of knowledge include exploring themoderating position of auditor’s type on timeliness of financial statements of listed family-owned firms in Nigeria which extant studies have scarcely investigated. The study recommended that listed family-owned firms in Nigeria should engage auditors for longer audit tenure among others.