Analysis of Audit Report Lag on Serbian Stock Exchange

In this paper, the audit report lag for Serbian business entities listed on Belgrade Stock Exchange will be analysed andthe results will be compared with other countries. Auditors perform the control of financial statements, and methods and documentation used for financial reporting preparation, which ultimately increases their reliability. Having that in mind, keeping track of the audit reports delivery dates has become a matter of interest in everyday business and investors’ decision-making process. In this paper a random sample of 196 public companies from the Republic of Serbia has been used to provide a descriptive statistic on Audit Report Lag (ARL). Also, a comparative analysis of related research from other countries has been done. Results show that minimum number of ARL in Serbia was 30 and a maximum number of days is 355. Also, the results show that ARL values for the audits performed by Big 4 auditors are higher than for the audits performed by the other audit companies.