Institutional ownership and earnings announcement timing of manager

This paper empirically examines the impact of institutional ownership on the earnings announcement timing of manager based on the investors' limited attention in financial market using the quarterly earnings announcements data of A shares from January, 2007 to December, 2011. The results reveal that the influence trajectory is an inverted U-shaped curve, and the critical value is 39.19%. Increasing the proportion of institutional holding within the limit of 39.19% will improve the earnings announcement timing of manager. However any increase above this threshold will aggravate the earnings announcement timing of manager. The proportion of institutional holding is under 39.19% for most Chinese listed firms, and the policy implications for Chinese capital market is that optimizing the investor structure by increasing the proportion of institutional ownership can improve the earnings announcement timing of manager efficiently.