The significant growth in the number of listed Western Australian companies in the past financial year has increased the end-of-financial-year auditing bottleneck and has some accounting practitioners calling for changes to the reporting deadlines imposed by the Australian Securities Exchange.
The number of Perth-based listed companies reached 700 at June 30, which is 120 more than the previous year and helped boost the number of companies listed on the ASX to more than 2,000.
That growth has been coupled with a shorter two-month deadline to submit annual accounts after the industry last year received an additional 15 days to complete accounts due to the introduction of Australian International Reporting Standards.
Prior to 2003, companies had 75 days to submit their accounts.
“There is more pressure on us than ever before,” one senior accountant, who declined to be named, said.
“It is not out of the realm of possibility that [next year] accounts might not get lodged in time.
“I think the ASX need to consider that when we are under pressure the quality of the information can decrease.”
The increasing activity in the listed arena has had a knock-on effect for the private sector. WA Business News understands several large WA private companies will receive their audited accounts two to three weeks later than last year.
Private companies have an extra month to submit their accounts with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
Ernst & Young managing partner Jeff Dowling said many analysts were also feeling the pressure and were forced to overlook some financial results because of the large number of reports released in a relatively short period of time.
Mr Dowling would like the ASX to introduce a staggered reporting system where the top 100 listed companies had a two-month deadline, followed by the next 100 companies a fortnight later, while those outside the top 200 companies had an additional month to file their accounts.
An ASX spokesman said the ASX consulted extensively with the industry during 2005 when it reviewed its two-month reporting deadline.
He said bio-tech group Biopharmica was the only company out of the more than 1,000 companies required to report their full-year results by August 31 that failed to submit its accounts, which showed the industry was capable of meeting the deadline.
Deloitte managing partner Keith Jones said his office coped with the busy period better than last year, but said more companies were choosing to lodge unaudited accounts in order to meet the ASX’s August 31 deadline.
Mr Jones said discrepancies in unaudited and audited figures would likely increase as more companies lodge unaudited figures followed by audited accounts.
