The timeliness of corporate reporting in an emerging economy : the case of Qatar

Abstract EN

The purpose of this study is to investigate the timeliness of corporate reporting in the state of Qatar.

The aim is to explore the effects of some of the firms attributes on timeliness of corporate reporting.

The factual data were gathered from the financial reports of 36 firms registered in Doha Security Market (DSM) over a six years period from 2000 to 2005.

Eight hypotheses relating timeliness to size, profitability, debt proportion, earnings per share, number of years the firm has been in DSM, type of industry (financial/nonfinancial), extraordinary items and type of audit-opinion are examined in this study to determine the association between some firms' attributes and timeliness of corporate reporting.

The t-test of differences, chi-square test of independent and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regressions were used.

This study revealed that the reporting period of DSM listed firms is 52 days which is found to be significantly shorter than that of some developed countries, but it is relatively longer than that in the Saudi Arabia (28 days).

The insurance service firms published its financial reports earlier than those firms in other sectors.

Finally, the results of this study revealed that the timeliness of corporate reporting in Qatar is significantly associated with the firm being financial or non financial, type of audit opinion, year-end closing date, whether the audit firm is international or local, and profitability.

It is hoped that this study, which is conducted in an economically and culturally different context from all existing studies can contribute towards the current literature on timeliness of corporate reporting.