The Impact of Audit Committee Independence and Size on the Audit Report Delay: An Applied Study

Abstract

The timeliness of corporate annual financial reports is considered to be a vital factor affecting the effectiveness of information that is made available to external users. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is any impact of audit committee independence and size on the audit report delay of the Egyptian listed companies. Furthermore, five control variables are used which are audit opinion, audit office size, firm size, leverage, and firm profitability. 250 observations were drawn from 50 Egyptian listed companies during 2016-2020 throughout four sectors which are healthcare and pharmaceuticals, real estate, industrial goods and services and automobiles, and the basic resources sector. The findings of the study indicated that there is a significantly positive impact of audit committee independence and audit office size on the audit report delay. Furthermore, there is a significantly negative impact of the audit opinion on the audit report delay. On contrary, the study concluded that the variables of audit committee size, firm size, leverage, and firm profitability did not show any significant association with the audit report delay. Moreover, there are significant differences among the four sectors under study regarding the variables (audit committee independence, audit opinion, leverage, firm profitability, and audit report delay).