Corporate governance – how to improve audit report lag: Evidence in Vietnam

Abstract

Presenting information that is accurate, presentable and consistent with the corporation can build investor confidence and allow them to have an effective assessment of their business operations and assets. It will enhance investor protection and market efficiency. That’s why providing timely information for related participants to make investment decisions has led to enhancing the temporality of financial statements. This paper studies the effect of corporate governance, the board of directors, audit committee on the delay of the published information. With the sample of Vietnam listed companies, covering a period of seven years (from 2016-2022) we use the OLS and GLS method to estimate the audit lag model. To improve the robustness, we also use 2SLS techniques in our regression analysis. The finding of this research indicates that the length of time from fiscal year-end to the audit report day is affected by many aspects coming from the corporate governance and audit committee such as: auditor switching, auditor opinion, board size, gender, board independence and finance position. Especially, the research has also pointed out whether external factors have an influence on the delay of the report