The timeliness of financial reporting in Russia: A trend analysis

Abstract

Timeliness in financial reporting has been considered as an important accounting principle for several decades. The Accounting Principles Board (APB 1970) issued a statement on this topic in 1970. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2004) lists it as a principle of good corporate governance. Some of the studies that have examined the timeliness of financial reporting are cited below in the reference section. Prior studies have found that the Russian companies that publish their financial statements in English take substantially longer to do so than do companies in the developed market economies (McGee 2006, 2007a-c; McGee and Gunn 2008; McGee and Tarangelo 2008; McGee and Tyler 2008). A similar result was found in a study comparing the time delay of financial statement publication for the Chinese and non-Chinese companies (McGee and Yuan 2008). But a study comparing the delay in releasing financial information for the new and old EU members found that no significant difference existed (McGee and Igoe 2008). The present study looks at the trend of delay in financial reporting for Russian companies in an attempt to determine whether the difference in time delay between the Russian companies and the companies in the developed market economies is narrowing over time. © 2009 Springer US.