Timely Reporting and Family Ownership : The Portuguese Case

This study investigates the factors influencing the timeliness of corporate financial reporting, highlighting the differences between publicly listed family and non-family firms. The empirical analysis relies on the firms listed in the Portuguese Stock Exchange, where a relatively large proportion of family controlled firms can be found. Based on a multi-theoretical framework that combines agency theory, stewardship theory and stakeholder theory, we suggest that family firms have an incentive to be more timely reporters than their non-family counterparts. After controlling for several variables, our findings are consistent with the predictions and thus indicate that Portuguese listed family firms are more likely to promptly report their annual financial statements to the market, when compared to non-family firms. The results obtained confirm the better quality of financial reporting practices of family firms documented in previous literature