The Impact of Annual Financial Reports Readability on the Cost of Debt Capital and Audit Fees: An Empirical Study on Firms Listed in the Egyptian Stock Exchange

Document Type : Original Article

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faculty of commerce, Cairo university

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to measure the impact of the annual financial reports' readability on the cost of debt capital and audit fees. This study used data from 64 Egyptian listed firms during the period from 2015 to 2020. The study used three indicators to measure the annual financial reports' readability; the LIX index, the number of pages of the annual report and the board of directors’ report, and the number of words contained in the board of directors’ report. Using the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) method, the results show a positive relationship between the declining annual financial reports' readability, the cost of debt capital, and audit fees. The principal component analysis was used as a robustness test to develop a composite index to gauge the annual financial reports' readability in the Egyptian context. The result of the robustness test confirmed the positive relationship between the variables.
 

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