An examination of audit delay of selected main board Malaysian companies / Raja Adzrin Raja Ahmad

Timeliness is a crucial qualitative attribute of financial statements where it requires the information to be made available to the users as rapidly as possible. This is because, the length of audit work is one of the factors that could affect the timing of earnings announcement. This study is undertaken to provide empirical evidence on the determinants of audit delay in Malaysia. By understanding these determinants, it is expected that this study could provide an explanation of audit delay phenomenon especially in this country. Specifically, the objective of this study is to determine whether there is an association between audit delay and a set of explanatory variables namely company size, industry classification, sign of income, extraordinary item, audit opinion, auditor, year-end and debt proportion. Multiple regression analysis was performed and the results indicated that six out of the eight explanatory variables are significant which are industry classification, sign of income, audit opinion, auditor, year-end and debt proportion. Out of these variables, the audit delay was positively associated with sign of income, audit opinion and debt proportion whilst negatively associated with the remaining three.