Auditors’ characteristics and timeliness of listed family-owned firms in Nigeria

Research question: What are the effects of auditors’ characteristics on timeliness of financial reporting among listed family-owned firms in Nigeria? Motivation: Timely issuance of audited annual financial report is highly desirable to various stakeholders against top management insider trading on the accounting information of which family-owned listed firms is highly prone to involve. Idea: This study examined the effect of auditor’s characteristics on timeliness of listed family-owned firms in Nigeria. Specifically, the study investigated the extent at which auditor’s type; audit opinion; audit fee; auditor’s tenure; and joint audit affect timeliness of financial statements of listed family-owned businesses in Nigeria. Data: The data used and evaluated covered a period from 2012 to 2021, and were drawn from 47 listed family-owned firms in Nigeria. The secondary data were obtained from MachameRatio database. Tools: Both descriptive statistics and partial least square regression analyses were performed. Findings: The robust test performed revealed that Big-4 audit firms, audit opinion and audit tenure have positive effect, while audit fee and joint audit impound negative effect, on timeliness of financial statements of listed family-owned firms in Nigeria. However, the result is statistically significant for audit opinion, audit tenure and audit fee. Contribution: The implication of the findings is that audit opinion and audit tenure enhance timely issuance of the financial reports of listed family-owned firms in Nigeria. This study’s contributions to the body of knowledge include exploring the position of auditor’s features on timeliness of financial statements of listed family-owned firms in Nigeria which extant studies have scarcely investigated. The study recommended that listed family-owned firms in Nigeria should engage auditors for longer audit tenure among others.