Timely Empirical Study On Annual Report Disclosure Of Listed Companies

Timeliness is not only the most basic element for accounting information quality character system, but also an important area of the research on accounting theory and practice. However, annual reports of listed companies are considered as important channels for company management, shareholder and other stakeholders to communicate with each other. Meanwhile, annual report is the best carrier of accounting information for listed company, the major basis for investors to make investment decision, and is an important way for stakeholders such as creditors and government regulators to get company information. In addition, only timely information disclosure is relevant to users. Hence, accounting theorists and practitioners focus on timeliness of annual report disclosure for listed company nowadays. Meanwhile, stakeholders such as investors, creditors and government department pay high attention on that.Recently, rules and regulation are regulated and perfected continuously in China's security market, but many listed companies disclosed the annual report in March or April due to the poor performance or non-standard audit opinion issued to the annual reports. Poor timeliness of annual report disclosure can't satisfy information needs of security investor and creditor, also impact the supervision government regulators on annual report information disclosure. By means of empirical study on the timeliness of annual report disclosure, important factors and effecting level influencing annual report disclosure opportunity of listed companies are found out. It's helpful for stakeholders such as security investors to make reasonable estimation on disclosure opportunity of company annual report. Thus, stakeholders make reasonable judgment on the quality of disclosure information of listed company annual report. Consequently, empirical study on the timeliness of annual report disclosure of listed company is of practical significant.Drawn on the timeliness evaluation method for annual report disclosure of listed company at home and abroad, according to the actual situation of China's security market, based on general definition and characteristics of timeliness of annual report disclosure, this paper presents effecting factors for timeliness of annual report, and select six key indexes affecting the timeliness of annual report disclosure. They are company performance, type of audit opinion, company scale, share-held proportion of the largest shareholder, independent director proportion and alteration of certified accountants office, respectively. Thus, comprehensive evaluation index system for timeliness of annual report disclosure in China is set up. In addition, the paper takes listed company in Fujian Province as an example, comprehensively use normal distribution test, rank correlation analysis, factor analysis, F-test and T-test, etc., makes analysis and evaluation on disclosure status of annual reports of listed companies in Fujian from 2007 to 2009 by setting up multivariable linear regression model and B-P neural network model. Based on the built models, this paper forecasts on disclosure opportunity of listed companies and draw conclusion as follows: patterns of annual report disclosure of listed companies in Fujian is not changed in March and April recently, and the poor timeliness of annual report disclosure of listed companies can't satisfy the information needs of stakeholders such as investors, etc.; timeliness of annual report disclosure of listed companies is taken as one of important factors to evaluate operating performance of listed companies, especially for the strong or weakness of profitability; type of audit opinion and timeliness of annual report disclosure are of significant negative correlation; audit opinion type of listed companies not timely disclosing annual report is more likely non-standard; and management of listed companies in Fujian manage annual report disclosure time.Based on the conclusion above, the paper puts forward relevant strategies and suggestion according to the three points of view, which are listed companies, security investors and government regulator. Finally, the paper points out the shortcomings possibly existing in the researching and directions in the future we should make great efforts.