上市公司年度报告及时性与审计意见

The Timeliness of Annual Reports of Listed Companies and the Audit Opinion

上市公司年度报告的及时性问题在最近几年持续受到监管机构和信息使用者的多方关注。本文通过对1999～2002年4年间公司年报披露时间与审计报告签署时间进行比较后认为,审计报告签署时间并不是影响年报及时性的真正原因,接着进行的实证研究表明,审计意见与年报披露时间存在着非常显著的相关性,而且,审计意见越严重,年报的及时性越差。

In recent years, the issue of timeliness of annual reporting has received much attention from regulatory bodies and information users. The association between the timeliness of annual reports and audit reports of Chinese listed companies is analyzed by comparing the corporate delay and the audit report delay and examining the association between the corporate delay and audit opinion. There is evidence that the time of audit report signature is not the primary factor affecting the timeliness of annual reports, however, the correlation between the reporting delay and audit opinion is very significant. There is also evidence that the more serious the audit opinion, the longer the annual reports delay.