Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption and corporate governance mechanisms (e.g., Board characteristics and Audit Committee (AC) characteristics) on Audit Report Lag (ARL) in an emerging country, named Saudi Arabia. Methodology: We use a sample of 616 firm-year observations from the Tadawul Stock Exchange in Saudi Arabia for the period 2016-2019. Panel regressions were used. Findings: The results indicate that ARL has significantly increased after the IFRSs' adoption. This result may imply that IFRS adoption leads to a need of adaptation process. It may support the need for more training and IFRS education in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, both AC diligence and AC financial expertise significantly reduce ARL. It may support the Saudi regulatory requirement to equip audit committees with at least one member with accounting and financial expertise. However, the results show that AC size and Board characteristics (board size, board independence and board meetings) are not significantly associated with ARL. Contribution: Our study fills the gap in the existing literature by examining the impact of the IFRSs' adoption and the corporate governance characteristics on ARL, whose results remain mixed and rare in Saudi Arabia, an emerging and under-studied context.

This article investigates the impact of the chief executive officer’s (CEO’s) power on research and development (R&D) expenditures in Saudi Arabia. Mainly, it studies the influence of CEOs’ power (ownership power, structural power and expert power) on their risk-taking behaviour. Empirically, we used a panel model with data from a sample of 60 Saudi firms listed from 2016 to 2019. We developed five models to examine both the direct and moderating effects of the power indicators on R&D expenditures using OLS regression. Findings demonstrate that Saudi firms promoting insider CEOs with short tenure and no ownership are more innovative. These results have great implications for researchers and investors to understand what kind of power they should consider when selecting leaders to carry out innovation plans and thus ensure long-term firm growth.