1School of Business, Asian University of Bangladesh.
2Department of Accounting and Information Systems, Rajshahi University.
Timeliness of annual reports is an important attribute of their usefulness. There is a paucity of research about the timeliness of the published audited accounts of the banking sector companies in developing countries in general and audit delays in particular. This paper empirically examined the relationship between the disclosure score and audit delay in a developing country, Bangladesh. The objective of the study is to establish the impact of discrosure score or timeliness. The analysis in this study involves developing a regression middel to explain the level of delay of the sample banks under study. This study examine, whether timeliness of corporate financial reporting in the banking sector has improved in Bangladesh following the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1993, the enactment of the Companies Act in 1994, the amendment of the SEC Rules in 1997, and the Banking Companies Act, 1991. Using 25% of the population (12 banks) observations over a period of 5 years (2002–2006), I find that regulatory changes have not improved timeliness in corporate reporting in the banking sector of Bangladesh as measured by the extent of audit lag, AGM lag and total lag.
