Determinants of Reporting Delay-Its Analysis and Impact on Efficiency in Financial Reporting: Evidences from Bangladesh

In recent years, the issue of timeliness of corporate financial reporting, an important qualitative characteristic of accounting information, has received much attention from regulatory and professional bodies of Bangladesh. This paper specially focuses on the determinants of reporting delay and on relative efficiency of companies under different industries in financial reporting .To identify the determinants of reporting delay, variables like type of audit opinion, financial performance, the status of the audit firm and book closure date are used. Using about 401 firm-year observations over a period of 7 years from 2004-2010, no relationship has been found between type of audit opinion and reporting delay. We also found that reporting delay is positively related to book closure date as at 31st December and negatively related to financial performance as well as to the status of audit firm and. Finally this paper reveals that in Bangladesh companies under Banking Industry are relatively efficient in financial reporting whereas Companies under Insurance Industry are taking more time in this ground.