تاثیرات ویژگی های حاکمیت شرکتی و تاخیر گزارش مالی بر گزارش عملکرد مالی شرکت ها Impact of corporate governance attributes and financial reporting lag on corporate financial performance

1. Introduction This paper investigates selected corporate governance (CG) attributes and financial reporting lag and their impact on financial performance of listed firms in Ghana. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB, 2010) Framework for the Preparation and Presentation of Financial Statements states that there are some qualitative characteristics that make the information provided in financial statements useful to users. These qualitative characteristics are relevance, faithful representation, comparability and understandability. According to the IASB (2010) relevance and faithful representation are the fundamental qualities, while comparability and understandability are enhancing qualities. Timeliness is an auxiliary aspect of relevance. Timeliness means having information available to decision-makers, before it loses its capacity to influence decisions. If information is either not available when it is needed, or becomes available so long after the reported events that it has no value for future action, it lacks relevance and is of little or no use (IASB, 2010). Timeliness alone, cannot make information relevant, but a lack of timeliness, can rob information of relevance it might otherwise have had. Timeliness provides a platform for market integrity and efficiency to ensure fairness, efficiency, transparency, protect investors and reduce risk, which will in turn improve financial reporting quality (Al-Ajmi, 2008; Turel, 2010). Prior empirical studies have examined the timeliness (reporting lag or delay) of corporate reporting and its determinants; (Apadore and Mohd Noor, 2013; Sharinah et al., 2014; Yadirichukwu and Ebimobowei, 2013; Ilaboya and Iyafekhe, 2014; Mohamad-Nor et al., 2010; Shukeriand Islam, 2012), examined financial reporting lag and audit committee characteristics timeliness and relevance of financial reporting; (Ohaka and Akani, 2017), examined company characteristics and timeliness of financial reporting. The objective of this paper is to investigate how selected CG attributes and financial reporting lag affect the financial performance of listed firms in Ghana. This paper differs from earlier research on timeliness of reporting and CG as it tests the influence of timeliness of reporting and board attributes on firm performance using only accounting information. Generally, there are two types of financial reporting lag: audit report lag (ARL); and management report lag. ARL is the period from a firm’s year-end and the audit report date while management report lag is a period between the end of the fiscal year of firms and the publication of the audited financial reports (Zaitul, 2010). Financial reporting lag in this study refers to ARL, i.e. the length of time between the fiscal year-end of a company and the date of the auditor’s report. The board attributes used are board size, proportion of independent directors, board gender diversity, independent audit committee, institutional ownership and block ownership concentration. Firm performance is measured using two accounting ratios; return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA). Accounting-based measures are preferable in the context of CG study because they reflect the ability of the management in adding value to the firm. Higher ROA and ROE ratios are indication that the firm’s CG mechanisms are highly effective (Mishra and Kapil, 2017).