The Timeliness of Financial Reporting: An Empirical Legal Study of Russian Banks

The timeliness of financial reporting has been an important topic in the accounting literature for decades. There is a tradeoff between the timeliness of reporting and the value of the information being reported. Prior to the advent of the Internet, reporting had to be done using print media. However, now that many companies post their annual and quarterly reports on the Internet, it is possible to report in a more timely fashion than has previously been possible. The problem is that companies in some countries do not make full use of this disclosure tool. They sometimes take many months to make the information available to the general public. The present empirical legal study examines the timeliness of financial reporting in the Russian banking sector and compares it to the SEC benchmark