An Examination of the Audit Report Lag of Companies Quoted in the Nigeria Stock Exchange

Abstract

As important information conciliator, audit report is all the time a focus of audit firms, companies, regulators and investors and its report lag directly determines the usefulness of decision making. We examined the audit report lag of companies quoted in the Nigeria stock exchange for the period 2008 to 2011. The investigation was conducted on a pooled sample of 60 firms across industries (Construction, Breweries, Oil & Gas, Health care, Packaging, Insurance, Publishing, Food Products, Automobiles, Hotel & tourism, Real Estate, Mortgage, ICT, Agro-Allied, Building Materials, Conglomerates, Courier and Banking). The results show that age of a company and total asset has a significant impact on audit report lag in Nigeria. However, the result indicates that Firm size and firm switch has no significant relationship on audit report lag in Nigerian companies. We recommended that further research area on audit report lag should increase the sample size and also the number of years under investigation. Also, Policy makers should look into the audit report lag of quoted companies in Nigeria and formulate policies to enforce compliance. This will assist in boosting investors’ confidence and also guide them in taken timely quality decisions either to invest or de-invest.