The purpose of our paper is to study how ownership structure affects ARL (audit report lag) in Swedish companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. In particular, family ownership (FAMO), institutional ownership (INSO) and foreign ownership (FORO) are analysed. Audit report lag is defined as the period between the end of a fiscal year to the signing of the audit report, which is directly followed by the release of an annual report. Based on a sample of 814 firm-year observations for Swedish-listed firms for 2020-2022, this study finds a significant negative relationship between audit report lag and both family and foreign ownership. The results indicate that audit report lag decreases when family and foreign ownership increases. Moreover, the findings suggest that family-owned firms have a shorter audit report lag compared to non-familyowned firms. No statistically significant relationship was discovered between ARL and institutional ownership. Arguments for our results can be found in the agency theory, signalling theory, and consequently the reputational hypothesis. Companies with certain ownership structures may try to signal certain information to investors to achieve the best possible reputation and external perception. Signalling theory has implications for companies that want to combat agency theory type 2 through timely reporting.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-532890 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Kagangule Lux, Alexandra, Teubert, Eva |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Företagsekonomiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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