Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the characteristics of a CEO, that is, tenure and financial expertise, could affect the timeliness of an audit report. Design/methodology/approach Research data gathered from listed companies on the Tehran Stock Exchange during the four-year period 2013-2016. Findings The results obtained from model fittings indicated that there is only a negative and significant relationship between CEO financial expertise and natural logarithm of audit report lag and no significant relationship observed between the former and two other indices of timely audit report. Moreover, no significant relationship was found between the CEO tenure and other three indices of timely audit report. Originality/value This paper is the first study, which developed the literature of timely audit report using CEO tenure effect and financial expertise tests for timely audit reports in Iran.