A Survey on Timeliness in Financial Reporting and Corporate Governance: Evidence from Iran Moradi Mahdi*, Salehi Mahdi**, Mareshk Mojtaba Soleymani*** *Associate Professor, Accounting, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran **Assistant Professor, Accounting, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran ***Accounting Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran Online published on 7 November, 2013. Abstract Timeliness has been one of the effective factors on the transparency of reporting and enhances the ability of stakeholders to recognize the capacity of an enterprise; its revenues, finance and the financial circumstances. Corporate governance, as a means to make equilibrium among the interest of stakeholders, affects the managers’ decisions. The current study has focused on efficacy of corporate governance on the timeliness on the annual financial reports of listed companies on Tehran Stock Exchange. The factors studied were the ratio of the institutional shareholders ownership; the ratio of the non-executive members; the ratio of the shares held by the CEO and the quantity of the majority shareholders and big auditor during 2009–2011. The efficacies of the mentioned factors were studied on the timeliness of the annual financial reporting. Results indicated that the effects of the factors such as majority shareholders and ROE were meaningful on the timeliness of the financial reporting. The statistical coefficients specified that increase in the quantity of the majority shareholders and ROE improved the timeliness of reporting whereas auditing by big Auditor decrease the timeliness. There was no meaningful relation between the timeliness of reporting and the ratio of non-executive members, the ratio of the shares of the managers and the quantity of the majority shareholders. Top Keywords Timeliness, Reporting Financial Statements, Corporate Governance. Top |