Investigating the Relationship between Auditor Change and Audit Fee with Audit Report Lag of Pharmaceutical Companies Listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange

Audit report lag is directly associated with audit efficiency and timely announcement of earnings. Moreover, the time of audit report is one of the important factors in determining the timeliness of corporate financial reporting. So, it seems necessary to investigate the effective factors in audit report lag. In this research, the relationship between auditor change and audit fee with audit report lag has been examined in 17 Pharmaceutical companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2008-2013. In order to investigate the relationship between variables, multiple regression model and Software Eviews Version 8 have been used. On average, the studied companies have issued their audit report 58 days after fiscal year with a standard deviation of 20 days. Also, the maximum audit report lag is 113 days and its minimum lag is 23 days. It shows that all audit firms have published their audit reports before expiring the deadline for submission of financial reports (4 month after fiscal year). The results derived from testing the research hypotheses indicate that there is no significant relationship between auditor change and audit report lag, but there is a significant and positive relationship between audit fee and audit report lag.