The Timing of Accounting Restatements: An Examination of the Strategic Disclosure Hypothesis

Abstract

Financial disclosure, playing an important role in communicating business situations with external users, is always under strict standards and regulation rules in relation to treatments, contents and presence. Timing of these public announcements then become a popular firms’ disclosure strategy. Using U.S. financial market data over ten years from 2005 to 2015, this study examines the strategic intra-week timing of companies’ restatements disclosure with relation to the news contained. Different from previous studies on highly visible annual earnings announcements or on purely voluntary management forecast announcements, this research uses restatements whose disclosure are mandatory from regulator but the timings are unscheduled. In addition, the market reaction of these restatements in relation to the disclosure timing is examined, showing whether such distraction is a successful strategy in mitigating negative market reactions. This research contributes to both restatements studies and limited attention studies.