Corporate governance and the timeliness of financial reporting: A study on the companies listed in İstanbul Stock Exchange Corporate Governance Index

Timeliness means that financial information should be available when it can affect decision-makers' decisions. In this case, it is expected from the firms that have adopted corporate governance to share their financial information fully, timely and accurately with the public. This study has two main objectives. Its primary objective is to examine the impact of corporate governance practices on timeliness of financial statements. The second objective is to investigate whether the publication time of financial statements is related to firm-specific factors such as size, asset and equity profitability ratio, financial leverage ratio and corporate governance. To do this, firstly, the time of presentation of financial reports to the public before and after entering in the BIST Corporate Governance Index (BIST-CGI) were analyzed by the frequency analysis. Then, the relationships between firm-specific factors that are thought to have an impact on the timeliness of financial reports were investigated by regression analysis. According to the frequency analysis results, it was revealed that the firms traded in the BIST CGI presented their financial reports to the public earlier after they indexed in the BIST CGI, compared to the years before they entered the index. According to the results of the correlation analysis, except for the size and leverage ratio before BIST-CGI, other factors have a positive effect on the timeliness of financial reports. After the BIST-CGI, examined factors, except for the size of businesses and asset profitability rate, had a positive effect on the timeliness of financial reports. Regardless of the period in which the companies traded in BIST-CGI, for the period between 2005 and 2017, regression analysis show that other factors, except for the size of the business, have a positive effect on the timely presentation of financial reports. It has been revealed that the size has a negative impact on the early presentation of financial statements during all periods of review.