The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of some demographic characteristics of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on Financial Reporting Timeliness (FRT) in Saudi Arabia. More particularly, this study aims to test whether or not CEO characteristics, namely, tenure, accounting financial expertise, and sociability are associated with FRT. The sample of this study consists of 119 non-financial firms listed on Tadawul Stock Exchange for a period of four years (2014-2017). We use panel regressions and two proxies of FRT. Our findings report that a long-tenured CEO is associated with timely financial reports when the IFRS transition is simultaneously considered. This result implies that companies with a long-tenured CEO reduce the period taken to prepare and disclose their financial reports in the period of IFRS transition. Our findings show that CEO accounting financial expertise is significantly associated with timely financial reporting. This result implies that companies with a CEO who is an accounting financial expert reduce the period taken to prepare and disclose their financial reports on the capital market website. Our findings also report that CEO sociability is significantly associated with timely financial reporting in all instances. This result suggests that companies with a more sociable CEO reduce the period taken to prepare and disclose their financial reports on the capital market website. This result implies that when the CEO is more sociable via social media, firms tend to be more active in disclosing their annual reports timely. Overall, findings report that CEO characteristics do matter regarding the timeliness of financial reporting. Results are robust to an alternative measure of financial reporting timeliness. Our findings should be of interest to policymakers and regulators in Saudi Arabia in formulating new policies as they need to play a role in ensuring the shorter gap of financial report delay. The findings of this research have also a practical implication for shareholders and boards of directors in selecting a new CEO by taking into consideration their accounting financial expertise and their sociability on social media. Findings of this research contribute to the growing literature by examining the effect of CEO characteristics on timely reporting in Saudi Arabia, an understudied and unique context. The present study also complements the recent literature on the determinants of financial reporting timeliness by providing evidence that the sociability and accounting financial expertise of top leaders improve the financial reporting timeliness.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the drivers of firms’ sociability on social media (SM), an unregulated area, in an emerging country, namely, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The sample of this study is 345 non-financial listed firms on Tadawul stock exchange during 2016-2019. Data are collected from several sources such as annual reports, the official website of the sample companies. Other data are collected manually such as the presence of the CEO and the sampled companies on SM. Our findings show that firm size and leverage level are important firms’ characteristics that drive firms’ sociability on social media. The finding shows that CEO sociability on social media is a key CEOs’ characteristic that drives firms’ sociability on social media. Further analysis reports that there is a complementary effect between CEO’s sociability on social media and firm size in increasing firms’ sociability on SM. The findings also show that there is a complementary effect between CEO’s sociability on social media and firm leverage in increasing firms’ sociability on SM. This study contributes to the disclosure literature by providing empirical evidence of the drivers of firms’ sociability on SM, an unregulated area in KSA. It also complements the considerable literature on voluntary disclosure which ignores the use of SM platforms as a “new” voluntary type of reporting. The present study complements recent literature on the adoption of SM by providing evidence that the sociability of top leaders is a driver of firms’ sociability on SM.