The caption below is extracted and adapted from the following article; Gholam Reza Zandi, and Nur Amalina Abdullah (2019). Financial Statements Timeliness: The Case of Malaysian Listed Industrial Product Companies. Asian Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 24, Supp. 2, 127-141. Based on the Bursa Malaysia’s requirements and descriptive analysis, only nine companies that represent 8.8% submit timely and within the statutory requirement (timely submission) while the remaining 93 companies or 91.2% (late submission) and within the required time by the statutory requirement. Malaysian companies only submit within the compliance required period because they are afraid of the negative impact of noncompliance with societal values as cited in a study by Cormier et al. (2009). According to Maslina, Hamidah and Sherliza (2016), for convergence of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) with MFRS the auditors might face challenge of issuing their clients’ listed company audited financial statements on time. It looks that the presence of specialist auditors from each industry can reduce the audit report lag and subsequently enhance financial reporting timeliness in Malaysia under MFRS fully convergence. 

Required: 

Discuss and analyse by writing an essay of about 900 words for (a) and 600 words for (b). 

a. Based on the above caption, why do you think the percentage of Malaysian companies that submit the annual reports timely is very low?