Covid-19 disclosure: do internal corporate governance and audit quality matter?

Purpose: We examine the impact of internal corporate governance and audit quality on the level of Covid-19 disclosure in Egypt.

Methodology: We use manual content analysis to measure levels of Covid-19 disclosure in the narrative sections of annual reports. We analyse all companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange over 2020-2021. We use different regression models to test our research hypotheses.

Findings: The analysis adds to the literature in two crucial respects. First, it provides a measure for Covid-19 disclosure in Egypt. Second, it provides evidence that governance mechanisms (board diversity, audit committee (AC) independence), auditor type and audit opinion affect the level of Covid-19 disclosure. The higher level of Covid-19 disclosure is associated with firms with more female directors on the board, being audited by one of the big four audit firms and receiving standard clean audit opinion. While the inexistence of an
AC and more executives on the AC negatively affect Covid-19 disclosure levels.

Originality: To the best of our knowledge, it is the only paper that examines Covid-19 disclosure in the Egyptian context. It is also the first paper that provides evidence on the impact of internal governance and audit quality on Covid-19 disclosure.