Corporate Disclosure in Relation to Combating Corporate Bribery: A Case Study of Two Chinese Telecommunications Companies

This paper investigates the association between global community concerns about bribery activities and anti‐bribery disclosure practices by two Chinese telecommunication companies operating internationally, namely China Mobile and ZTE. Based on content analysis of annual reports and global news media articles over a period of 16 years from 1995–2010, the findings suggest that the changes in the level of disclosures by the two major Chinese telecommunications companies were closely associated with the level of international concerns over bribery practices within the Chinese telecommunications industry. This finding indicates that the companies adopt anti‐bribery disclosure practices in order to minimise the gap of trust (social capital) between companies themselves and global stakeholders. In this paper we argue that, for domestic companies in China, culturally constructed social capital, such as guanxi, creates a level of trust between managers and their stakeholders, which obviates the need for managers to disclose anti‐bribery performance information. However, for companies operating internationally, as social capital is inadequate to bridge the gap of trust between managers and global stakeholders, managers use disclosures of anti‐bribery performance information as a way to minimise such a gap.     

Corporate Climate Change‐Related Governance Practices and Related Disclosures: Evidence from Australia

This paper investigates the climate change‐related corporate governance disclosure practices of five major Australian energy‐intensive companies over a 16‐year period. In doing so, a content analysis instrument is developed to identify disclosures made in relation to various policies and procedures the organisations have in place for addressing the issues associated with climate change. This instrument is applied to the respective companies’ annual reports and sustainability reports. An increasing trend is found in companies’ climate change‐related corporate governance disclosures over time; however, in many instances the disclosures provide limited insights into the climate change‐related risks and opportunities confronting the sample companies.     

Determinants of corporate risk disclosure in large Spanish companies: a snapshot

Improvements in risk disclosure have been an important part of the corporate governance reforms. This paper is intended to identify the factors that explain the extent to which a sample of 35 listed Spanish firms disclose risk-related information. This study focuses on the risk disclosures made in the corporate governance reports during the year 2009. Using the content analysis technique an index was developed in order to assess the amount and quality of the risk information disclosed by Spanish companies. Several characteristics were selected and their influence on the level of risk disclosure was tested empirically. Results indicate that sector and risk level are positively related to the extent of corporate risk disclosures. This study adds to the international research on risk disclosure by extending the scope of the current understanding of risk reporting practices and their determinants. The findings could be especially useful for regulators and policy-makers in order to enhance risk disclosure and to improve transparency.     

To Steal or Not to Steal: Firm Attributes, Legal Environment, and Valuation

Data on corporate governance and disclosure practices reveal wide within‐country variation that decreases with the strength of investors' legal protection. A simple model identifies three firm attributes related to that variation: investment opportunities, external financing, and ownership structure. Using firm‐level governance and transparency data from 27 countries, we find that all three firm attributes are related to the quality of governance and disclosure practices, and firms with higher governance and transparency rankings are valued higher in stock markets. All relations are stronger in less investor‐friendly countries, demonstrating that firms adapt to poor legal environments to establish efficient governance practices.     

Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility Reporting Practices from an Emerging Mobile Telecommunications Market

This study examines corporate social responsibility reporting practices in the rapidly growing mobile telecommunications industry in Bangladesh. This industry sector is one of the fastest growing in the world making it an attractive global investment. Using content analysis we reviewed and analysed the annual reports of four major mobile companies between 2008 and 2011. The findings reveal that mobile telecommunications companies in Bangladesh disclose social and environmental responsibility information across a range of categories. We find that these mobile companies provide significant benefits to education and health in Bangladesh and that their focus on community and development disclosures are motivated in part by seeking to maintain legitimacy in an extremely competitive industry.     

保险公司治理评价:指标体系构建与评分计算方法

保险公司治理评价是保险公司治理理论与实践的重要组成部分。本文构建了一个涵盖股东权益机制、董事会治理、监事会治理、经理层治理、信息披露机制、利益相关者治理、公司治理文化、公司社会责任等8个一级指标以及与之相关的33个二级指标和117个三级指标的保险公司治理评价指标体系。本文基于层次分析法对保险公司治理评分的计算方法进行了探讨,并籍此对保险公司治理评分进行了算例分析。该保险公司治理评价指标体系与评分计算方法有利于促进保险公司自身的治理诊断控制,并能为保险公司的股东、债权人、员工、客户等各类利益相关者的相关决策及政府的监管提供有益的指导与参考。     

The Need for Effective Communication with Market Stakeholders

Good corporate governance practices have become increasingly important in determining the cost of capital in global capital markets. The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) aims to promote an environment of market confidence so that listed companies can obtain reasonably priced capital and maximise the value of their listing. As the market operator, the exchange has the ability to set and monitor disclosure standards and to support dialogue between companies and investors. However, a problem with corporate governance disclosures in Australia is that they have not delivered particularly meaningful information to investors about the performance of individual companies.     

Corporate Governance,Companies’ Disclosure Practices and Market Transparency: A Cross Country Study

We examine the link between corporate governance, companies’ disclosure practices and their equity market transparency in a study of more than 5,000 listed companies in 23 countries covering the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2008. Our results confirm the belief that better‐governed firms make more frequent disclosures to the market. We also find greater disclosure in common law relative to code law countries. However firms with better governance in both code and common law countries make more frequent disclosures. We measure market transparency by the timeliness of prices. In contrast to single country studies, results show, for the 23 countries collectively, better corporate governance is associated with less timely share prices. This would suggest that a firm substitutes better corporate governance for transparency. We are thus led to the conclusion that even if information is disclosed more frequently by better‐governed firms, it does not necessarily follow that information is reflected in share prices on a timelier basis.     

资本市场开放能否提高企业信息披露质量？——基于“沪港通”和年报文本挖掘的分析

提高信息披露质量对于改善上市公司治理结构和保护股东权益具有重要意义。本文利用2014年开通的“沪港通”机制这一准自然实验,研究资本市场开放是否提高了企业的信息披露质量。从2010-2019年A股上市公司年报文本中提炼可读性指标衡量信息披露质量,使用匹配和双重差分方法进行实证研究,发现“沪港通”机制实施以后,标的公司(纳入“沪港通”的A股上市公司)的信息披露质量显著提高。这一结论对不同的估计方法、样本区间及控制变量组均保持稳健。异质性分析表明,对于盈余操纵水平较高、股价信息含量较低的企业,资本市场开放能够更好地改善其信息披露质量。本文丰富了资本市场开放对企业行为和绩效影响的实证研究,为继续推进资本市场开放政策提供了理论依据。     

Comparative analysis of environmental,social, and governance disclosures

We examine the level of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sustainability disclosure by firms between two regimes where disclosure is mandatory versus voluntary. We use the regulatory environment between the United States (US) and European Union (EU) to compare ESG disclosures. Firms in the US are currently under a voluntary disclosure regime. In contrast, EU members are under a mandatory disclosure regulatory regime that began in 2017. We find that EU firms outperform US firms under voluntary disclosure requirements (2007–2016), and the ESG disclosure of EU firms further improves relative to US firms after the implementation of the mandatory disclosure in Europe in 2017. Our results suggest that the 2017 adoption of disclosure guidelines in the EU is associated with improvements in EU firms' ESG disclosure. Our results regarding the value-relevance of ESG disclosure support a move toward mandatory ESG disclosures. Results support current initiatives that have been taken by global regulators and stock exchanges in recommending and requiring globally listed companies to disclose their ESG sustainability information to portray accurate and comprehensive corporate reporting. The results further our understanding of how firms from different institutional environment settings may have disclosed their ESG practices, thus providing opportunities for future research.     

Associations between social responsibility disclosure and characteristics of companies

Surveys have shown a trend of increased corporate disclosure of social responsibility information. This paper suggests some reasons why companies provide social responsibility information and examines the effects of four variables (size, systematic risk, social constraints and management decision horizon) on the social responsibility disclosure practices of Australian companies.     

On the relation between corporate governance compliance and operating performance

Better corporate performance has been cited as one of the main benefits of adopting good corporate governance structures within organisations. However, in contrast to theory, a prior European study (Bauer et al., 2004) reports evidence of a negative relationship between corporate governance and corporate performance. This study re‐examines this relationship, and reports evidence of a positive relationship between the extent of compliance with international best practices concerning board structure and functioning and operating performance when operating performance is measured by the return on assets (ROA). This result is robust to controlling for the firms’ compliance with best practices in other governance areas, and holds for some other governance dimensions, namely disclosure of corporate governance and the range of takeover defences. Further tests indicate that greater compliance with international best practices concerning board structure and functioning is significantly associated with reporting less income from asset disposals and that studying a performance measure that includes this item obscures the inherently positive relationship between operating performance and the extent of compliance with international best practices regarding board structure and functioning. The results provide some support for an oftencited motivation for the adoption of good governance practices, and provide explicit evidence that the measure of operating performance is crucial in examining firm‐level operating performance.     

Accounting for financial instruments: An analysis of the determinants of disclosure in the Portuguese stock exchange

This paper studies the determinants of disclosure level in the accounting for financial instruments of Portuguese listed companies. An index of disclosure based on IAS 32 and IAS 39 requirements is computed for each company. The analysis includes variables that capture intrinsic features of Portuguese companies and institutional regulatory context, such as capital structure and characteristics of the corporate governance structure, within contingency theory. We could not find any significant influence of corporate governance structure or of financing structure. We conclude that the disclosure degree is significantly related to size, type of auditor, listing status and economic sector. This research reveals areas for improvement of Portuguese companies' reporting practices and suggests areas for intervention of the Portuguese capital markets regulator in the context of mandatory IAS after 2005.     

Quality of Corporate Governance and Cost of Equity in Brazil

Common sense suggests that the adoption of better corporate governance practices, which enable greater transparency, more protection against capital expropriation, and greater rights for investors, should have the effect of reducing the risk perceived by shareholders and so lead to lower required returns. This article investigates the existence of an inverse relationship between the quality of corporate governance and the cost of equity capital for Brazilian companies. The authors begin by constructing a broad index of corporate governance quality that combines four key aspects of corporate governance: (1) transparency and disclosure; (2) structure of the board of directors; (3) ownership and control structure; and (4) shareholder rights. To estimate the cost of equity, the CAPM was applied by using ex ante market premiums calculated with a simple discounted‐dividend method. On the basis of a sample of 67 Brazilian companies traded at the São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) during the period 1998–2008, the study concludes that there is a significant inverse relationship between the cost of equity and a number of proxies for effective governance, particularly those representing transparency and disclosure. Closer inspection of the reductions in cost of capital associated with improvements in the specific governance quality index components suggests that companies would benefit the most from prompt submission of information to regulators and full disclosure of executive pay.     

公司特征与公司社会责任信息披露——来自我国上市公司的经验证据

本文在自愿性信息披露的研究框架下,结合公司社会责任理论,对我国上市公司的公司特征与公司社会责任信息披露之间关系进行了实证分析。文章选取了1999年到2004年在上海和深圳证券交易所上市交易的石化塑胶行业的A股公司作为研究样本,通过对年报进行内容分析,构建了公司社会责任信息披露指数。实证检验发现:(1)规模越大、盈利能力越好的公司越倾向于披露公司社会责任信息;(2)公司财务杠杆和再融资需求不影响公司社会责任信息披露;(3)包括上市地点和披露期间在内的披露环境对公司社会责任信息披露有显著影响。文章还对公司社会责任信息的提供者、使用者和监管者提出了建议。     

The extent of corporate governance disclosure and its determinants in a developing market: The case of Egypt

This paper assesses the extent of corporate governance voluntary disclosure and the impact of a comprehensive set of corporate governance (CG) attributes (board composition, board size, CEO duality, director ownership, blockholder ownership and the existence of audit committee) on the extent of corporate governance voluntary disclosure in Egypt. The measurement of disclosure is based on published data created from a checklist developed by the United Nations, which was gathered from a manual review of financial statements and websites of a sample of Egyptian companies listed on Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX). Although the levels of CG disclosure are found to be minimal, disclosure is high for items that are mandatory under the Egyptian Accounting Standards (EASs). The failure of companies to disclose such information clearly shows some ineffectiveness and inadequacy in the regulatory framework in Egypt. Moreover, the phenomenon of non-compliance may also be attributed to socio-economic factors in Egypt. Therefore, it is expected that Egyptian firms will take a long time to appraise the payback of increased CG disclosure. The findings indicate that that—ceteris paribus—the extent of CG disclosure is (1) lower for companies with duality in position and higher ownership concentration as measured by blockholder ownership; and (2) increases with the proportion of independent directors on the board and firm size. The results of the study support theoretical arguments that companies disclose corporate governance information in order to reduce information asymmetry and agency costs and to improve investor confidence in the reported accounting information. The empirical evidence from this study enhances the understanding of the corporate governance disclosure environment in Egypt as one of the emerging markets in the Middle East.     

Corporate governance and environmental performance and disclosures

In this study the relationships between good corporate governance practices and environmental performance and disclosure are examined. Firms that are among the major emitters of toxic emissions in the United States comprise the sample for the study. Pollution performance is measured using a methodology that includes both the toxicology of the emissions and the population density of the community. A corporate governance measure and a pollution disclosure evaluation that were previously presented in the accounting literature are utilized in the study to validate the main performance measure.The findings indicate that there is no relationship between good governance and good pollution performance. Additionally good governance is positively related to pollution disclosure while the correlation does not hold when governance was improved by SOX. The overall findings support legitimacy theory. This may indicate that the story about pollution performance is better than the actual outcome.     

Disclosure Practices of Foreign Companies Interacting with U.S. Markets

We analyze the disclosure practices of companies as a function of their interaction with U.S. markets for a group of 794 firms from 24 countries in the Asia‐Pacific and Europe. Our analysis uses the Transparency and Disclosure scores developed recently by Standard & Poor's. These scores rate the disclosure of companies from around the world using U.S. disclosure practices as an implicit benchmark. Results show a positive association between these disclosure scores and a variety of market interaction measures, including U.S. listing, U.S. investment flows, exports to, and operations in the United States. Trade with the United States at the country level, however, has an insignificant relationship with the disclosure scores. Our empirical analysis controls for the previously documented association between disclosure and firm size, performance, and country legal origin. Our results are broadly consistent with the hypothesis that cross‐border economic interactions are associated with similarities in disclosure and governance practices.     

The use of the Internet for corporate reporting in the Mercosur (Southern common market): The Argentina case

This study examines disclosure practices on the websites of companies listed on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange. We perform content analysis to provide evidence on Internet reporting practices by 84 publicly traded firms. We also identify the characteristics of firms that communicate financial and non-financial information on the Internet. We find that companies in the financial and insurance, services and mining industries disclose more financial and non-financial information on their websites than companies in other industries. The average concentration of ownership is 68%, with 27% of the companies being controlled by foreign groups. Those companies with higher concentration disclose more financial and non financial information than companies with less concentration. Companies in the financial and insurance and service industries, utilize their websites for commercial purposes to facilitate access to customers to their accounts and also to sell services. This e-commerce usage of websites is less developed in other industries. About 71% of companies in the financial and insurance industry are included in the Merval25 index and are audited by Big 4. These companies are both larger in size and less profitable than companies in other industries. We find that profitability and leverage do not have significant effect on corporate Internet reporting practices and that growth has negative effect on corporate Internet reporting practices. We also find that companies in the mining sector provide significantly more disclosure about social responsibility indicating a desire to improve the public image of harming the environment. The results documented, herein, extend the literature on voluntary disclosure of financial and non-financial information using the Internet in emerging markets.     

我国上市公司违规信息披露的影响因素研究

上市公司违反监管强制披露基本要求进行的违规信息披露加剧了市场信息不对称,是证券市场健康发展的严重阻碍。本文从财务状况、控制人动机、公司治理结构、环境与制度等方面系统地分析了影响上市公司违规信息披露的主要因素,并以被监管者查处的违规信息披露的上市公司为样本进行实证检验,研究表明在一定的环境和制度下,财务状况和控制人动机是影响目前我国上市公司违规信息披露的主要方面,但公司治理结构时违规披露的约束和影响力较小。