A Research On Interim Voluntary Audit And Its Effect On Timeliness Of Accounting Information Disclosure

Interim financial report,as a kind of important information which listed companies must disclose periodically, whether should be audited by independent accountants before discloure, now different requirements has been established in different countries. For an instance,in the U.S. whose securities market has the most advanced administration system, the regulatory organizations have asserted the necessity of enforcing listed companies'interim financial information quality control in the market lack of honesty and reliability. For this purpose, the U.S. SEC has made timely reviews of quarterly financial staments madatory for all registrants since 2000. This requirement has been perceeived as one great progress to the improvement of U.S. listed companies'information disclosure system.Contrast with the U.S., China Securities Regulatory Comission(CSRC) documented: Without some other special situations, listed companies'interim financial statements must not be audited before disclosure. In other words , most listed companies could make their interim financial statements audited voluntarily. However, to author's surprise, although this voluntary audit system has been carried out for almost ten years , in China there are few researches on it ,especially empirical researches. Given the experience of U.S. , this dissertation affirms the improvement of listed companies'interim financial reporting system, as well as the development of whether these statements should be audited, plays a key role in the construction of listed companies'information disclosure system in the future. Thus, the essentiality of systematic research on this topic emerges.Try to find out a proper means to the research, this dissertation studies the theoretical fundamentals on companies'voluntary audit system first, and find the likelihood that a company purchases voluntary audit is associated with modern corporate governance stucture in the nature. With this notion, the dissertation select chinese listed companies as sample, and make use of empirical analysis to demonstrate the relationship between them .The result shows companies with larger director committees, higher percent of independent directors, higher concenrtration of stock ownership are more likely to purchase interim voluntary andit. In addition,the dissertation also finds a significant positive association between the public issuance of new stock and the likelihood of purchasing an interim voluntary audit. Further,with prior reasearches on the timeliness of listed companies'accounting information disclosure, this dissertation made a empirical research on interim voluntary audit's effect on the timeliness of listed companies'financial reporting. The conclusion is interim voluntary audit doesn't make significant negative effect on the timeliness of listed companies'interim financial reporting, whereas can enhance the timeliness of listed companies'annual financial reporting a lot .